


Last One, First One

by baku_midnight



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Enemies to Friends, Entity's realm, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of canon-typical violence, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Size Difference, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26781781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baku_midnight/pseuds/baku_midnight
Summary: Dwight finds himself injured and with the Trapper looming over him, and wonders if he was just accidently put on the wrong side after a trial…or if there’s another reason he’s stuck with only the tall, dark and silent villain for company.
Relationships: Dwight Fairfield/Evan MacMillan | The Trapper
Comments: 61
Kudos: 310





	1. Waking Up

Light cracked through his lids and Dwight knew, before he even opened them, that he was in an unfamiliar place. His eyes, his body, his every sense was so accustomed to the particular light and warmth of the campfire, and the silence and coolness of the surrounding wood, that he could tell without stirring that he was elsewhere. For a moment he lay, afraid to open his eyes fully: afraid of what he might see.

Blinking slowly, Dwight felt his heart begin to race and climb up his throat. He was inside a structure with a ceiling of overlapping logs of cedar, with wooden walls, and an old smell of metal and mold.

His side ached like he’d been gutted by a fisherman with a shaky hand. He swallowed as he shifted his weight onto his elbow, and then up to sitting. He was in a cabin—somewhat bigger, with a wide central space that was filled haphazardly with debris, much like everywhere else in the realm: further to the meagre metal-framed bed on which he currently lay, a sofa flanked the opposing wall, a stove sat in the middle, a pickaxe stood on its head in the corner, and the remains of a dining space in another, with a table laden with musty cloth and grime, and a few broken chairs. The pickaxe hinted to him to whom the space belonged, and looking about the room, he said under his breath, “Trapper…?”

The space appeared empty save for his self and the few bits of furniture in various states of disrepair. The cabin echoed with nothing but the sound of his breath, and so, moderately reassured, he went to inspect his own state.

His side was bandaged and beneath it seared with the pain of a cut, and his lower leg was broken, or at least twisted: he’d become well accustomed to the feel that wounds from every sort of weapon made since coming here, from bludgeon to switchblade, and even catalogued a few of them for his own recollection, sorting their descriptions in his memory. Being hit with a flying ax felt like the colour green, a bold, sudden feeling, whereas being pricked with a switchblade was red, or orange, a bright flash of pain, like a giant bee sting—gosh, how he _missed_ bee stings. A hammer felt yellow, like the colour of a bruise in its last, irritating stages of healing, and a katana was shooting, mind-wiping white. Then there were broken bones, burns from hot metal, broken nails, scrapes and contusions and an array of other injuries his mind didn’t have room to store.

The rainbow of pain he was currently experiencing made it distinctly difficult to sit up, much less get up and explore the cabin in which he was currently confined. So Dwight sighed and laid back down, sliding a hand behind his head and resting upon it. He looked at the ceiling again—or rather, what was the inside of the roof itself, a set of tightly-arranged cedar logs, their natural gnarls and boles on display.

Injuries healed quickly at the campfire, or at least it seemed that way, since there was no way to catalogue time without the changing of day to night. The watch Bill had brought in with him ticked randomly, speeding and slowing and sometimes stopping all together, as if the ancient mechanisms inside were confused. It was probably just broken, but still Bill cradled it in his hands, watching it for what might’ve been hours, or days, setting his jaw and pondering whatever it was someone like him pondered. He was different than Dwight: he was one accustomed to injury and death _before_ coming to the realm, and didn’t have to learn from scratch. Dwight sighed.

In a split second, it seemed, Dwight’s vision filled with the hulking body of _the Trapper_ , stood over him and staring, shoulders back, head tilted as if a raptor surveying his prey. Dwight gasped and scrambled back on the bed, crawling on his elbows backwards until he hit the aluminum headboard, sobbing as pain spread out from his throbbing side and mangled leg. He swore but continued to struggle until he was as far back as he could go, half-seated with legs splayed uselessly in front of him.

The Trapper only stood, head tilted in observation, his hulking body gathered awkwardly at the side of the bed. He took a step nearer and Dwight reacted on instinct, striking out with his non-injured foot, slamming it wherever it could reach. It connected with the Trapper’s side and the killer made a wordless sound of surprise, and Dwight gasped in agony. It was like striking concrete with his heel, and the motion sent a throb of pain and a fresh gush of steaming blood from his torn side. He regretted the impulse to attack immediately, clutching at his stomach and drawing his broken leg straight.

“J-jeesus… just do it,” Dwight gritted out. The deep swallows of air he was forcing into his lungs did nothing to mask the pain in his voice. This suffering was worse than usual—maybe the campfire did have some sort of special healing property, or maybe it was just the placebo effect made of having his friends near, but the poison of _this_ pain was far more potent in his body than the usual post-trial injury. “Just kill me, or whatever,” he hissed.

Surely there was no other reason that the Trapper was before him. Being tortured and killed, that’s all there was in this realm, save the occasional respite to sit and _anticipate_ being tortured and killed. He breathed raggedly, lying flat on his back and covering his eyes with a shaking hand.

If he was lucky, the Trapper might just choke him to death. That was an easy way to go, and one that he preferred to the other possibilities. Getting stabbed in the heart was another good choice—though the pain through his sternum was incredible, the speed of death was more than adequate. That he’d gone through it enough to have a _preference_ was a sickening prospect, but still, it’s not like he could exactly turn his brain _off_.

For some reason, the Trapper didn’t move to attack him. He was serenely still, it seemed, here in this cabin, content to observe and ponder instead of endlessly stalk and snatch. Dwight cracked open a single eye, peering up through his fingers. The Trapper was looking intently at his wound—or at least it seemed so, difficult as it was to reason the direction of his mask’s pupil-less stare.

Dwight looked down at his side. It was now a shock of vibrant red, new blood gushing and staining the yellowed bandage and his raggedy work shirt above it. He moaned in frustration. At the campfire, he’d have a medical kit, and the hands of a well-intentioned fellow survivor or so to seal his sloppy cuts. It would probably be a mercy for the Trapper to kill him and send him back there—and so that’s probably why he wasn’t doing it, the big _bastard._

Dwight gasped as he felt a touch graze his side, and looked down to see the Trapper’s thick palms lifting up his shirt.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Dwight frantically shook his head, “you really don’t—”

He was cut off by a sob that expelled from his mouth as the Trapper pinched the edge of his bandage and ripped it off in one quick motion. Dwight shrieked and curled over in the fetal position, grabbing uselessly at the big hands that were disturbing his injured skin. Blood sluiced over his abdomen and hip, soaking the already gruesome mattress beneath him. Dwight watched in horror as thick, scarred and stained fingers approached his gash, and for a moment he imagined them slipping _inside_ , invading his innards like a vicious parasite, and he nearly fell faint. But instead, the fingers gripped and pinched the sides of his wound together, squeezing it closed.

Dwight panted as he watched, fingers clinging until they were white to the Trapper’s stone-hard forearms. The beast of a man reached into the pocket of his overalls and withdrew a gauze pad, miraculously still in packaging. He held it indelicately between two thick digits before thrusting it towards Dwight.

“Wh-what?” Dwight gasped out, looking between it and the Trapper’s eyeless face. Then he lifted a shaky hand to the package and tore it open, withdrawing the pad and placing it in the Trapper’s hand.

One hand holding his wound closed, the Trapper planted the gauze against Dwight’s sopping side with the other, in the crudest version of first aid imaginable. He then revealed a strip of cloth from another pocket and gestured for Dwight to sit up with a wave of the hand. With great difficulty Dwight did so, holding his shirt up out of the way while the Trapper wound cloth around his damaged torso. One, two, six rotations went around his aching body and it was all Dwight could do not to collapse, and as the bandage was tied firmly in place around his stomach he did so, falling back onto his elbow and then curling onto his side in a fetal pose.

He supposed he should say _thank you_. The bleeding was slowing, thanks to the messy first aid. Maybe he was better off being captured by the Doctor or Nurse—at least he could count on them to know some semblance of _medicine_. He shuddered at the thought. It should be terrifying enough of being in so close proximity with the killer who so menaced him, but the mix of blood loss and adrenaline somehow made it tolerable to lay there and pant and groan at the mercy of the Trapper. He was less scared than he was _worn out_ by the injury, and _annoyed_ that he wasn’t dead. Moreover his mind raced with questions: where were they? How had they gotten here? And, most importantly, why hadn’t he died in the trial?

Dwight caught his breath for as long as he was able, and for just as long, the Trapper actually stayed seated on the adjacent sofa and stared at him. He was utterly silent, which was to be expected: Dwight had never heard a killer utter a word. The lot of them were like chained dogs, most of the time, confined and wordless and living by instinct. Only a few of the killers seemed utterly impressed with themselves and their circumstances; the remaining portion seemed like they were…going through the motions.

So, what happened? While he tried not to cry like a toddler with a skinned knee the way he _so_ wanted to, Dwight considered the possibilities: perhaps he had been unable to escape, and the Trapper, instead of just murdering him outright, had brought him here to clean him up, only to hunt him down later. Maybe something had gone wrong, and he’d been dropped off on the “killers’ side” rather than the “survivors’ side” of the campfire post-trial. Or, there was the always popular possibility, and the one he’d been clinging to for at least the first two or three hundred trials: this was all a terrible dream and he merely had to wake from it.

But shutting his eyes and begging to awaken at home, in his apartment, to the sound of his neighbours yelling at each other at five in the morning, or the dog next door who apparently thought someone coughing in a room across the street was a major threat to its personal security, had no effect. Not a dream, no, this was just some new iteration of his purgatorial doom. When he felt he could sit up, Dwight looked out the small window that was beside his bed. It was streaked with mildew, with a sill barely large enough for Dwight to rest his elbow on.

The window framed a sopping, nighttime, Pacific coastal rainforest scene. Trees that were larger in circumference than the span of Dwight’s arms stood like massive sentinels just outside the window. Moss hung in thick, wet tresses from the bowing branches of awe-inspiring cedars, and ferns spurted out foliage in thick, dark sprigs below. The forest looked misty and mysterious, and Dwight could almost feel its cold and the damp on his cheeks through the sealed window.

Beyond a pair of trees was the faint glow of a fire: the campfire, Dwight realized, hope suddenly blooming in him. It was hardly a hundred yards away, and no doubt surrounded by a dozen familiar forms gathered for warmth. From this vantage, he couldn’t see everyone, but expected the rest hidden behind thick trunks of trees and mossy undergrowth.

He had the distinct feeling of being on the other side of the looking glass, to use the hackneyed saying of his former boss. He was looking at the campfire, but as observer rather than participant, feeling not its warmth and its hope, but watching from afar, like a voyeur. Is this…how the killers existed, all this time?

It made sense, Dwight realized, that they—the _killers_ , so named by Dwight and his crew, for obvious reasons—would each of them have a campfire their own to go back to when not in trials, and _not_ where they gathered all together. The thought of a dozen mismatched murderers sitting placidly about camp, sharing ghost stories in grunts and growls, was so absurd, Dwight let out a miserable laugh.

Is this where the Trapper spent his time outside of trials? Staring at them from a distance? Why did he not approach? _Could_ he not?

With a bolt of panic rocketing through him, Dwight tried to get to his feet, pain reminding him of his leg. It was still twisted something awful, and he felt tears prick his eyes with the pain. What if he was stuck here, on the killer’s side, now, forever?

The Trapper was suddenly at his side, looking down at him curiously. He tilted his mask in the direction of Dwight’s leg.

“Sorry, but, look. While this has been great, Mr., uh…” Dwight mumbled. What was his real name? He’d read it somewhere in the Archives… “Mr. Trapper? I uh, should be going, really. I need to get back to my side.”

The killer ignored him, reaching for his leg. Dwight drew it away instinctively, wincing. It felt like the bone was struck with a metal hammer. He remembered, vaguely, a bear trap crunching down around it, shredding the leg of his slacks. Panicking, despite having experienced the same countless times before, he’d tried to flee, and likely fractured or twisted the bones about each other in the process. The Trapper knelt at the side of the bed and took up the leg. The fabric below the knee was absent, and around Dwight’s calf was a plastic splint, tied in place with more bandage. Dwight sat still as the hulking predator cradled his shin, picking and unwinding a bit of bandage, re-tucking it into place, and applying more where was needed.

It was something akin to putting his arm in the jaws of a lion, Dwight thought, his stomach doing flips as he was forced to accept the killer’s aid. The Trapper’s thick, brown fingers made for clumsy work, and no doubt the mask obscured his vision for detail—but at this point, Dwight was _glad_ he kept it on. He didn’t want to become any more immediately familiar with the killer than he was now.

Dwight lay back down, looking at the ceiling. The broad, honey-coloured logs of cedar crossed each other, decorated with only knots and grains. An electric light swung from the apex of the ceiling, useless and unlit. The cabin smelled of cedar, iron, and, of course, blood. The Trapper was still holding his leg aloft, redressing it with clumsy care. It was nerve-wracking, but countless trials with the big bastard had made Dwight somewhat more familiar and less careful around him—he felt an awkward sort of connection to him; maybe even he was the first killer Dwight had had the honour of facing.

Heart slowing from its manic pace to a manageable step, Dwight closed his eyes and let out a breath. Mingled in the black nebula behind his eyelids, Dwight saw the gravel floor of MacMillan Estate—ah, that was his name!—from his low vantage point, lying on his stomach.

His three teammates—Kate, Ash, and Zari, he thought?—spared him one last, uneasy glance from the doorway before sprinting towards the door. They were swept up in a flash of lightning that struck behind Dwight’s lids. He pulled himself along by his fingers until the pain was too much. He expected the Entity to burst from the ground at any moment to spear him open, like a spider piercing and sucking the juice from its prey, if the killer didn’t find him first. He squeezed his eyes shut as the sound of heavy footfalls drew near. But he didn’t find a cleaver in his back, or a hook in his shoulder. Instead he was hoisted up across the killer’s broad chest, and carried off through the cold forest.


	2. Trapped

Time was the most obnoxiously frustrating thing, here. Even worse than the dying—at least dying had finality to it, a limit, it didn’t just drag on forever and endlessly, long enough for Dwight to think every thought he’d ever had in sequence and then loop back around to the first. Dwight was pretty good at estimating how long things took—driving deliveries had given him an acute sense of whether a trip would take 13 minutes or 14, and he could pretty much plan out his day hour-by-hour at the start-up. But here, in this stupid, mindless place, he didn’t know if something took hours or seconds. It didn’t matter, because the light was always the same. They didn’t need to sleep, though some survivors took the opportunity while huddled by the fire, leaning against logs or each other’s knees.

As such, Dwight didn’t know how long he’d been in the cabin. Five days, or five minutes? Did it matter? His injury gave him no estimation, nor did his roommate—who spent most of his time crouched by the stove, staring out, or seated on the raggedy sofa, leaning forward, hands between his spread knees, clearly not interested in chatting. Dwight sat up and looked out the window. The campfire in the clearing illuminated the figures of a dozen of his peers, but three or four were missing, he realized, their shapes too distant to discern exactly which. The missing were in a trial, Dwight thought, almost longingly.

The trial was what he knew. It was better than this…nonsense, being kept in a cabin by a silent, hulking woodsman, like an infirmed maiden. He thought about a story they’d read in sophomore year, about a woman who went mad from being locked in a nursery and treated like a broken dove. Luckily there was no wallpaper in this room, though Dwight was beginning to spot figures dancing in the knots of the cedar.

He turned on the mattress and put both feet on the ground. It wasn’t too bad, actually: keeping the weight on his uninjured leg, he stood, supporting himself with a hand on the wall. He wobbled a moment, but was soon upright, and seeing the small room from a height. It looked just as shabby, and his roommate/captor/nurse just as homely and fearsome from this angle.

Dwight stumbled over to the door of the cabin. It was closed but unlocked. In the time it took him to cover the distance in a dozen struggling half-steps, however, the Trapper strode the cabin in three long strides, and put himself in front of the door. He held out his hand to block Dwight’s egress.

Dwight startled, then frowned.

“Okay, Mr. MacMillan?” He leaned on one foot, rubbing his sore thigh. He could almost feel the healing warmth of the campfire on his aching limbs, and see the awkwardly smiling faces of his compatriots. He was less scared and more annoyed, at this point. It was like being stuck in a trial where the killer hovered over you, letting your time run out instead of raising you to a hook: exasperating. “This has been a breeze, and all, and thanks for the first aid, but I really should get back.”

The Trapper pointed wordlessly at his leg.

Dwight sighed. “Yes, I know. But me?” he gestured at his own face, “I belong with _them_. So if you’re not gonna kill me, then, just, you know, let me through.”

The Trapper merely stared at him.

Dwight shook his head. He felt suddenly bold—something about dying over and over made a person a little more fearless, or at least a little more sardonic in the actual face of death. “Yeah, okay. I think I can handle walking a few—”

As he took a step, he stumbled instantly, his ankle giving way to a shot of fiery ache. He fell towards the Trapper, crashing against his side, to have the giant man snatch him up with one hand beneath his armpit, dragging him back upright.

Dwight felt like sobbing, not only from the pain, so intense, now in both his leg and his side, but the humiliation. Just done lamenting his infirmed status, he’d fallen over like an old man on a rickety cane. What the _hell_ was he doing? What were the both of them doing? This was so stupid. For the past…however long it’d been, Dwight had known that his job was to avoid the killer and get back to the fire. So what the hell was he doing here?

Too agonized to struggle, Dwight allowed the Trapper to half-drag him back to the mattress and deposit him there. He lay back on his elbow, staring upwards. What the hell was going on? Why wasn’t he healing?

Dwight asked as much of his captor, expecting no clear answer and receiving none.

***

Just as Dwight started to wonder why neither of them were being called for trials, he noticed the Trapper absent from the cabin. Having been pouting at the wall, he hadn’t noticed the bastard leave, and now, looking carefully around, he saw only a hulk-sized dent in the sofa, nothing but smoldering charcoal in the stove, and sensed a dearth of iron-sweat smell. The killer must’ve been off in a trial, or else lumbering around in the woods somewhere, brooding or grunting wordlessly or whatever it was he did when not murdering.

Dwight tried to sit up, to be pulled back by the arm. Turning with a slow sort of dread, he saw that he was restrained at the wrist to the bed by crudely formed iron shackles.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me…” He grumbled and tried to pull away, finding the chain held him firm and the thick iron cuff was hard against the bone of his wrist. He struggled angrily, trying to tear himself away a few more useless times until he collapsed back. Grumbling and thrashing, he swore a litany to make his sweet Southern grandma pinch his ear.

What the hell was the killer up to? _Forcing_ him to heal? For what purpose? Was Dwight like the children in the witch’s cabin, being fattened up for slaughter? He supposed he was lucky he wasn’t in the captivity of the Huntress or the Hag, at least, knowing what he did about _their_ particular proclivities—but this wasn’t much better!

Dwight fumed, a little surprised at himself that he was more angry than frightened. The Dwight he was when he was alive would be crying, begging and pissing himself at this point in his captivity, if not a lot sooner. Being in this realm had made him more fearless, transformed him into a new shape—the man he was _now_ would no longer cower before bullies. He wouldn’t let people be mistreated in front of him. He would stand up to his boss! Not that he would ever have the chance, again. That was the Entity’s whole shtick, right? Tempt him with hope: the hope of escape, the hope of freedom, the hope to right the stupid wrongs of his mortal life—and then never actually let him have it.

“Fuck,” Dwight swore at the ceiling, the crossed logs of the cabin like bars on a cage. He rolled over onto his side and tried to work at the cuff. He folded his thumb into his palm and pulled, but it didn’t go. There was no hole for a key, but instead a crude peg-and-ring system held the two halves of the circle together, and no matter how he tried, Dwight couldn’t loosen it. He struggled until his fingers hurt and he’d cut his thumb on a sharp bit of metal.

He lay, glaring impotently at the door over his feet, as if he could channel enough vehemence into his stare to force the thing open, or maybe burn it down. He hated the door, now, almost more than the killer who had dragged him here and strung him up like a mental patient in one of those old-timey facilities where they thought that all illness was the fault of demons and not praying hard enough. At least Dwight’s madness _was_ the fault of demons: one in particular. One with a big, stupid carved smile, bald head, dirty hands and more muscle than brains.

Eventually, the door opened and admitted the Trapper, whose huge frame barely squeezed through. He ducked his head under the frame and closed the door behind him. In his hands he ported his cleaver, the tip tinged with fresh blood. He tossed it somewhere aside without looking, and approached Dwight, turning a pupil-less stare on him.

Dwight glared as the killer floated at his side. His heart raced as he realized how very useless he was, in this position. MacMillan could skewer him, break him, or touch him wherever he wanted to.

The Trapper’s hands hovered over him for a moment, as if unsure where to place them, and then he reached for Dwight’s leg, softly lifting it, as if to administer more sloppy-but-well-meaning aid.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Dwight yelled, “f-fuck _right off_ with that!”

He kicked out with his intact leg, slamming his heel into the Trapper’s shoulder and chest. It hurt to rattle his body so, but he kept kicking, aiming for the killer’s head. MacMillan lifted his hands in surrender, shaking his head, no, he didn’t intend to fight, but Dwight kept swinging with his leg until the Trapper had backed away out of the reach of his thrashing. When he tried to approach again, Dwight reached and swung with his fist.

“You don’t get to do that!” Dwight snapped. “Tie me up here like a-a prisoner, then act all friendly?” This was absurd. This whole scene set everything off-tilt. He wanted out. _Out._ Wanted back to normal, back to the fire and the trials and life-or-death, not…whatever _this_ shit was.

“You wanna be friends, now? Is that it?” Dwight spat, “i-it doesn’t work like that! You’re the _villain_ of this story. You’re the _nightmare_. You’re the movie monster who chains people up in his cabin—who even _does_ this?!”

The Trapper lowered his head. If Dwight looked closely, he would see that the hulk of a man looked actually…hurt? His broad shoulders were droopy like a scolded dog’s. Dwight took in a shaky breath, rather surprised at his own outburst.

“Uh-uncuff me right now,” Dwight insisted, and watched as the Trapper nodded and did so. He pinched and pulled and with his hard, calloused fingers pulled the peg free and let the cuff fall open.

Dwight inspected his wrist, finding it bruised, as well as finding his own abrasive attitude gone along with the restraint. He ducked his head. What was he thinking, talking to a killer like that? Did he _want_ to die horribly? What would even happen if he died here, in the forest, rather than in a trial? Was it possible?

Maybe he’d actually get to go free—like, die _for real_ , and go to a real eternal rest. In that case, maybe he _should_ keep antagonizing. But the low, defeated look of the Trapper’s, er, body—his face still being an unknowable entity—gave him pause. Sometimes, he’d considered that the killers were suffering just as much as the survivors. But the thought typically fled as another knife sunk into his back.

He wouldn’t look at the Trapper, nor did the killer look at him. MacMillan went to make a new fire, taking firewood from the pile stacked haphazardly beneath the stove, adding small pieces to the choking coals and allowing them to fizzle back to life. They crackled and hissed a little, the gentle echo of the iron case of the stove echoing softly.

Dwight sat up, rubbing his wrist. He looked out the window. The campfire was a constant, warm orange, creating a cone of light between two massive cedars. Did the others wonder where he was?

Looking closely, he counted only nine survivors around the fire, sat in a circle, poking occasionally at the flames with a scavenged stick. Nine? That didn’t seem right.


	3. Together

Slowly and surely, Dwight’s leg healed. It still throbbed, and his side still stung when he stretched it too far, but it was good enough for him to stand with the splint. He paced the cabin, taking tours of the messily compiled version of a living space that the Entity surely designed. The Trapper sat as if in meditation on the sofa, hands folded and head down. He seethed with silent thoughts, and no matter how much Dwight tried to engage him—from afar, indeed—he gave no verbal answer.

“Why did you save me? Bored, or something?” Dwight tried, leaning on the counter of the useless kitchenette. (Out of curiosity, he’d actually looked in the oven, and found a cooking pot on a cooking sheet filled with more cooking pots.) When he received no answer to any question but a silent pointer finger directed towards his splinted leg, he rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, I got it.” He let out a sigh. He approached the window again. By his count, there were only eight at the fireside. Only four were taken at a time, so, minus himself, there should be a few more. And, looking closely, he noticed Kate, Ash and Zarina absent.

“I keep looking over there,” Dwight commented, more to himself, since he was essentially talking to a brick wall, “and I swear I can only see nine or eight people. It doesn’t seem right—the Entity only takes four at a time; it’s been like that since I got here. What d’you think’s happening?”

The Trapper didn’t reply, of course. He kept looking at his hands. His fingers were perpetually stained—at least at the campfire, there was a creek of fresh water to wash their wounds, and new clothes to change into, gifted sporadically by the Entity, to remind the survivors or their old lives, either to dole out for them some pitiful portion of hope, or to taunt them. When Dwight’s old pizza place uniform had appeared, he’d let out a bitter laugh before putting it on. When the others had asked about it, he’d kept quiet, not quite ready to share the story. Now, he would do _anything_ to suffer Meg’s teasing, or David’s goodhearted jabs, or Jake’s quiet eye-rolls, even if it meant sharing a humbling part of his past. He _had to_ get back to the fire.

“I should really go and check it out,” Dwight considered aloud, “they’re probably wondering what happened to me.”

He peeked over at the Trapper, who had his chin ducked behind folded hands, unresponsive. Gathering his resolve into one deep, steadying breath, Dwight strode towards the door, at first slowly, nonchalantly, and then hurrying until he was rushing, _running_ to the portal and grabbing for the handle.

Just as his fingers touched the brass of the knob he felt arms around his waist, hefting him back from the door. His feet left the ground and he groaned in pain as the Trapper squeezed just a little too tightly around his aching middle and ported him away from his freedom.

Dwight struggled. He fought like his life depended on it, but much like in the trials, it was like a fish flopping uselessly on the deck of a boat, flinging himself about, his side aching and protesting, one leg unserviceable for the task. He swore and sobbed with frustration as the Trapper dragged him back over to the bed and shoved him against it.

“What is your problem?!” Dwight argued, holding his damaged side, “why can’t I leave?!”

The killer began to gesture at Dwight’s injuries but he cried in protest. “Forget that! What’s going on out there? Do you know? Why won’t you tell me? Can you even talk?”

He smacked the hand that reached out for him, and MacMillan sidled away, almost sadly. The Trapper went to go sit on the couch again, leaning forward on his elbows. He was like a robotic sentry, guarding Dwight from escape, activated by Dwight’s rebellion and dormant again when Dwight was once more still.

Dwight looked out the window. He counted only seven of his cohorts this time, their figures yellow, white and orange in the light of the fire. That the rest were absent meant that…maybe, no…

“Where are they?” Dwight asked, knowing full well he was talking to a stone statue with slightly less charisma. He stared the killer down, receiving no reply, but the slow, defeated turn of his head.

“Are they…gone? For real?” Dwight asked, with slow, hideous realization. Maybe… Was it possible that their time had run out? One last escape, and it was over, forever?

He chewed the inside of his lip while he pondered, the dark damp of the forest seeping through the glass against his cheek, when he leaned on the windowsill and stared. There had been a sort of uneasy cheer among the survivors lately, a sense of peace. They had made niches for themselves and filled them. Meg distracted the killer with her fancy footwork, and David took over with his fearless energy when she tired. Jake knew how to hide in the shadows and taught his teammates with silent gestures how to avoid being seen or heard. Bill knew how to get out of a tight situation, while Claudette patiently healed their wounds.

As for Dwight? He used his words. He inspired and compelled, mediated and gave advice. It was hard to believe how necessary it was, in the lonely desolation of a trial, to communicate. He brought them together, and he told them when to scatter. It still felt nearly alien to him, to be the one to speak up, when before the Entity had taken him, he’d struggled endlessly at doing just that.

The fact was, the survivors worked together like on a well-crewed ship, rather than as a collection of travellers lost in the repugnant fog. They didn’t expect anything more than to minimize their suffering, even when that was impossible. They were pessimistic, realistic, and they cooperated. They lacked _hope_ , now, at last, and were filled instead with complacency, commitment, stillness of mind. It only suited that the Entity found them no longer useful. But was it enough to let them go?


	4. Alone

MacMillan was seated with his lower back against the sofa, one arm crossed over his belly (the other one impeded by long metal barbs), wriggling occasionally with discomfort. The implements that were embedded in his flesh seemed at first like the sign of murders gone wrong, but appeared now more like torture devices, considering how much discomfort they seemed to cause. Dwight wondered where they came from. It stood to reason that Killers were stuck here, too, after all, forced to relive either their worst nightmares or most exhilarating dreams again and again. Dwight wondered which it was for the Trapper.

He brooded in silence, the massive bulk of him finally falling still, in a sleepless rest, staring at his lap, much like Dwight had been before he began instead to watch the window and door with increasing anxiety. The crowd around the fire fell to six, and then finally four: Meg, Claudette, Jake, and Nea. The first of them to arrive here, after Dwight. Dwight remembered the relief that poured over him at the sight of others like him, and the hope that had filled him like liquid filled a glass: the hope of being able to work together, of succeeding. It took a great many trials for that optimism to fade, and stupidly, it was coming back, now, filling Dwight’s stomach with circling moths—more tired and bad-tempered than butterflies.

The Trapper, on the other hand, was much devoid of positivity—such was obvious from the lifeless pose. He slouched in silence and in pain, while Dwight watched him from the bed and tried uselessly at conversation.

“So, what’s your story? Something about a mine, right?” Dwight needled, staring hard at the Trapper. He suffered a small flinch, but didn’t respond otherwise. “Is that how you got the spines in your arm? Mining accident?”

The Trapper faced him, spooky mask concealing his countenance, but it was clear he was staring hard at Dwight. Dwight nearly wanted him to attack. Attacking, he understood. It was something particularly unnerving when the killer simply…stopped coming, during a trial. When he hovered about, stared, or gestured mutely like he was trying to share something. The Trapper’s constant silence was disturbing.

This was some strange version of hell—no pain, no hunger or thirst, just the aching memory thereof, and the only company a silent hulk. Dwight leaned on his elbow, picking at the dirty sheet with two fingers.

“What would happen if I died here?” Dwight pondered aloud, considering the cleaver resting by the door. He wondered if that was the way to get back to the fire. But as his wounds seemed to heal at a more normal pace—the gash in his side, for instance, grew thick with a scab, the tender skin around it turning red, then dark, then eventually sour yellow as the bruising faded—perhaps there was something else.

The Trapper stared hard at him through his mask. Dwight caught a flash of shine through the dark eyeholes.

“Have you ever tried?” Dwight asked, growing bolder. “Is that what the spikes are from…?”

The Trapper looked at him, hard, before eventually turning away, back to his lap. He couldn’t lean back and was forced to remain slumped over—he must be sore in such a position, Dwight couldn’t help but think.

Dwight hefted himself from the bed with some effort, went to his silent companion, and sat near him.

He crossed the uninjured leg under his body and stretched out the splinted one, at the distance to be out of the Trapper’s reach, but near enough to speak in hushed tones.

“How did you get here?” Dwight asked, once again aware that he was speaking to a silent sculpture, too ugly for any gallery but perhaps Medusa’s garden. He wondered how long the Trapper had been there before him: minutes, days? Years? Given the look of some of the locations in the fog, it’s possible some killers had been stolen centuries before Dwight’s time: was it possible that they stayed while survivors came and went? Remaining for countless trials, as a batch of survivors arrived and left just as inexplicably?

“Were you scared?” Dwight asked instead, and edged closer to the killer, mimicking his posture, leaning back on the front of the sofa. He’d might as well share, if no one else was going to. He took a deep breath.

“I was so scared. I was shaking, crying, pissing myself—I think I died like, twenty times before I caught on to the whole generator thing. I was just so scared… I couldn’t think, I couldn’t make myself move, it was like my body was disconnected from my brain. I don’t even remember who I was in there with, or who it was who was killing me back then.”

The Trapper flinched a little, but then shifted, shrugging it off. But Dwight sensed the tenseness in him, the anxiety. He’d gotten pretty good at recognizing how other people felt, and pretty good at compelling them to feel otherwise, too. It was his niche, after all: he led with his words, his gestures, his emotions, all carefully curated for the situation. With his words, he’d compelled survivors to drag themselves back from the brink, he’d encouraged a group of newbies to finish a generator in record time, and, selfishly, he’d convinced others to risk themselves so that he could escape. He wasn’t proud, exactly, of _that_ discovered power, but it helped little to dwell on it.

He thought about the way he’d once dragged a despondent Laurie out of her reverie, coaxing her by sitting near her and speaking softly, plying her to give them information about the mysterious killer who’d arrived with her. Her blond hair had clung about her cheeks as she stared at the campfire, too drained to even attempt at wiping the blood from her chin and hands. She was loath to give up the information, but Dwight brought it out of her like letting blood, and she was the more miserable for it. Such was Dwight’s ability—and he didn’t always use it for good.

Dwight reached across and placed a palm on the Trapper’s arm. The man stiffened.

Dwight’s heart began to pound, an unsubtle fear rising in his chest. Even though the killer had showed him no violence since bringing him here, he still expected to be shoved away or attacked. But MacMillan merely shrugged, settling, still unbearably stiff, into the touch.

When he wasn’t rebuffed, Dwight settled his hand over the killer’s, giving it a squeeze. It was firm and warm—Dwight was mildly surprised that the skin was hot and living, rather than clammy like a zombie or dry like stone. He was breathing, his chest rising and falling, the sound of air moving through his mask raggedy and coarse.

“You must’ve been scared, too,” Dwight whispered. He could even feel a pulse under his fingertips, slid to the inside of the Trapper’s wrist, steady and quick. Ah-ha. This, he could use.

“You’re only human, after all, right? I mean,” Dwight went on.

He remembered the lame attempt at encouragement he’d given Min when she first arrived at the fire. For the longest time she sat there hugging her knees, glaring at everyone who approached. When Dwight first tried to extend a hand to her, she’d shouted at him in Chinese and knocked his fingers away.

Eventually he just sat down at her side and mumbled something about trying her best and using her skills. Everyone’s gotta have skills, right? She scarcely seemed to be listening, but the speech must’ve helped somewhat, as she was on her feet and into the next trial without hesitation. Her frown was still constant, while Dwight offered a shaky, fake, “I’ve worked in retail so long I don’t know what real happiness is”-type smile.

What skills did the Trapper have that Dwight could bolster? What weaknesses could he, well, exploit?

“We’re all only human, right? Doing the best we can.” Dwight traced the killer’s scars with his eyes, on the part of his chest that peeked above the overalls. He petted the man’s hand as if trying to hypnotize him like one did a cockerel or shark or some other belligerent beast. It seemed to be working. The Trapper was breathing softly, deeply, apparently unconcerned about how near Dwight suddenly was—and why would he be? Dwight was half his size, nothing resembling a threat, and nothing but an annoyance, most of the time.

Dwight let out a deep breath, trying to encourage the killer to mimic him and relax. The Trapper followed, drawing in a deep breath of air, and letting it out in a long sigh.

Dwight watched carefully every shift in movement and mood. This was not only his niche, but his superpower: reading what someone else thought of him. He could make himself appear as big or as small as he wanted in the eyes of another—this a power he’d discovered too late.

How Dwight would _love_ to go back in time and call out his old boss at the start-up, now that he’d literally stared down death! But for now, this would have to do.

He watched as the Trapper began to relax, the tension in all eight span and 300 pounds or whatever of him sinking into the bare, wooden floor. He slumped forward, chin dropping tiredly towards his barrel chest. Dwight, too, allowed himself to enjoy a bit of the touch, a feel of skin-to-skin contact without violence. He sighed loudly again, drawing lazily on the Trapper’s arm, zigzagging across a scar with his pointer finger.

“It’s okay,” Dwight whispered, “to be scared. I used to think it was a burden, but I realize now that it’s just survival instinct. It’s there to keep us alive. It’s how we make it through this.”

Incrementally, the Trapper’s breath started to slow. Dwight looked across at the Trapper’s free arm, which was burdened with spikes, and capable of choking the life from him with little effort. He swallowed, but willed his fear aside.

The killer was relaxing, letting down his guard, calming. When the sound of the wood crackling gently in the stove was the only one in the cabin, Dwight lifted himself up, slowly, slowly. He peered down at his handiwork.

The survivors at least had the option to rest in the safety of one another’s company. When did the Trapper?—Likely never, by the look of soft, heavy contentment on his body, now.

He was like Cerberus calmed at the gates, three heads resting sleepily between his great paws.

Dwight backed away, step by step, and then, in a rush, he made a break for the door.

He ran to the door without looking back. He nearly tripped over his weakened leg but kept rushing, falling against the wood with a crack. Behind him he heard grunts of effort, a creak of the floor, but he didn’t spare a thought apart from those used to help him _escape_. He turned the knob, shaking, flung open the portal and sprinted out into the woods.

The woods were a maze of overlapping trees, their arrangement ceaselessly shifting, such that any sense of direction was useless beyond a threshold of moderate distance. But the campfire remained. It was warm, steady, golden yellow—there. Dwight ran, feeling the Trapper following close behind, closing the gap with his massive strides as Dwight sprinted. The crown of the flame was in view. He bolted into the clearing like a deer, leaping over roots, almost there, skidding into the gravel and…

Dwight stared. The fire was empty. Such as it hadn’t been since Dwight had first arrived, shaking and alone, thinking his predicament yet another prank at his expense.

No one was there. The survivors were all of them gone, and among their abandoned effects: medical kits and maps, assorted keys and archive books—a note, lying on top. While the fire burned ceaselessly and without pause, Dwight plucked the note and read as far as his address, before stuffing it into his pocket. He couldn’t bear to read what it said, and knew quite well besides.

He realized his pursuer was no more behind him and looked over his shoulder to find the Trapper stood a good distance away, stopped as if by some unseen force. He was staring, the unblinking holes of his mask less menacing than miserable, at the empty campsite. Dwight stared back a moment, numb. His tongue felt lifeless, his limbs the same, his faculties more so.

They were gone.

They had gone. They were…free? Had they gone back to their lives? Dwight’d believed in Heaven when he was a child and saw delightful depictions of it in books, a perpetually sunny realm where everyone was happy and diverse and modestly dressed. But his childhood religious education hadn’t prepared him for the Entity or its games, and so now, he didn’t know what to believe. Did they return to their lives? Move on to Heaven? Or simply…go? Disappear into the dark, forever?

Dwight wandered back towards the woods, mindless. His feet moved on their own. The warmth of the fire was on his back, dissipating until it was gone. He stood before the Trapper, looking up at his hulking frame.

“You…” Dwight uttered.

“Why did you…?”

Choked up, he felt a tear, cold and sticky on his cheek. A single one. He was surprised that he wasn’t more upset: everything and everyone he’d known was gone, again. But this time, unlike when he’d first arrived, and clung to the possibility of escaping in earnest, he felt no hope.

It was gone, and the absence of it was almost freeing. There was no hope. He repeated it again inside his head. There was no hope.

“Why?”

The Trapper sunk to his knees in the wood, heavy arms dropping at his sides, limp. He mumbled something, the first thing Dwight had heard pass his lips aside from grunts and sighs. It was a low, quiet, broken, single word.

“…lone…” MacMillan uttered, and Dwight took a step closer to hear him. “…alone.”

Dwight stood before the killer. MacMillan was on his knees, helpless. A hand reached weakly out towards him, a square, blood-stained fingertip grazing his leg before falling away, defeated.

“I would be alone,” MacMillan said, the admission miserable, broken, deeply felt.

Dwight let out a breath and sunk to his knees. He put out a hand to touch the Trapper’s shoulder, and in response felt hands come and wrap about him, one around his waist and the other his back, embracing him gently, softly, like a fragile thing, easily broken. Easily lost. Then his grip grew fierce and he squeezed Dwight tightly, like he was an anchor in a storm, and letting him go would mean he would be swept away. Hands pressed hard into his skin. An arm tightened about his waist.

Dwight said nothing and simply let himself be embraced. They held each other at the edge of the woods in silence for a long while, as distant embers crackled and lightning bugs buzzed in unknown crags between the redwoods.


	5. Forward

Dwight sat a spell at the campfire, with MacMillan ever just out of range to steal him back, prevented from coming nearer, a silent sentry at the wood’s edge. Dwight waited for a while, wondering—which was different than hoping—if his friends would reappear.

It was a selfish desire, to wish them back here to share in his torment, but as he sank into self-pity, his resentment for MacMillan…lessened. He understood well how lonely it was to be left behind, and lamented only that he couldn’t say a last goodbye to Meg, Jake, and Claudette, to David, Ace and Nea, and to all of them he would, with any luck, never see in this realm again.

Nothing happened at the fireside. The embers trickled to a low, ever-present glow, only inches high but never actually going out. Dwight watched, sniffling and wiping his eyes with his wrist.

There was nothing to do, now. Nothing but to go forward. He’d lost enough jobs in his lifetime to know what it meant to start from scratch. Luckily, it wasn’t quite from square one.

He gathered up remnants from the fire: pillows scavenged from the Yamaoka residence, empty books from the lab, blankets from the neighborhood, and clothing left behind by his cohorts. It was all worn, but unchanging, and so Dwight took it back to the cabin to furnish the meagre lodging.

He carried an armful of linens and clothing to the Trapper, who was looking at him, almost guilty—again, it was only from the slouch of his shoulders that Dwight could read anything—and silent. At least he had the sense to feel ashamed, Dwight thought, firming his jaw. He shoved the bundle at the big man, none-too-gently—in fact, with all of the force he could muster. To his satisfaction, the brick wall swayed just a little as he ported the remains of Dwight’s former companions.

Dwight dressed the cabin bed in old sheets and blankets and pieces of linen. He took off the splint from his leg and stored it, noticing the insignia of Crotus Prenn stamped on the plastic and raising a curious brow. He stored medkits in stacks under the bed as well. After a few trips back and forth from the fire to the cabin, the minor pain of his still-weak ankle somewhat reassuring, he was satisfied with the look of the place and sat in his nest, swinging his socked feet up onto the covers and crossing them.

In his pocket, burning him like figurative coals, was the note he’d scavenged from the fireside. He’d been unable to get past his name when first he picked it up, but now he unfolded it in its entirety. On Lery’s Memorial letterhead, decorated with creases across the paper overlapping like the tines of a snowflake, was written in Jake’s neat, square handwriting,

_Dwight,_

_We don’t know where you are but we can only hope you’ve left for good. No offense, but if I never saw you again in this place, I’d be happy. Something’s going on. People are exiting trials and not coming back. No one knows where they’re going, but we’re hoping they’re getting out of here. The last of us just got called. Here’s hoping we won’t be back._

_-Jake, Meg, Claudette_

Dwight looked at the note, only noticing the wet trickles on the page when they reached his cold fingers, gripping the edges with white-knuckled fervor. He cried a few tiny, silent tears like he hadn’t cried for what seemed like years down here in the realm. Tears—actual tears of sadness instead of the ones issued forth as a physical response to intolerable pain—came forth. He swore under his breath and tucked the note back in his pocket.

He heard a shuffle of overgrown feet and saw that MacMillan was standing before him, head slightly cocked, a silent watchman. Dwight shook his head incredulously.

“You want the bed?” Dwight asked, voice hollow, vehemently ignoring his own emotional reaction. “Go ahead.”

MacMillan sat on the bed beside him. He had stripped to a pair of slacks and bare feet at the same time Dwight had changed into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt he’d taken from his collection by the fire. Dwight’d taken the clothes of all the survivors that fit him, to keep, or to wear, maybe, sometime if he was feeling particularly sentimental, or masochistic. For now, they were all folded and stored in a cabinet on the far side of the cabin.

With his body exposed, the amount of MacMillan that was true, living, tormented flesh was revealed. Aside the mask he was a large man, slightly stooped with age—more likely misery—laden with muscle and mutilated with scars across his breast, back, shoulders, and arms. It looked like he’d been whipped to within an inch of his unnatural life. Dwight let his eyes trace the extent of the scars that split open across the man’s pectorals, his shoulder blades and spine, but at the moment, he didn’t have it in him to feel sorry.

MacMillan lay down, making a grunt of effort as he tried to settle in. He leaned awkwardly on one elbow, avoiding the metal forced through the other. Dwight moved to stand, but a thick, rough hand reached for him, taking his arm.

Dwight looked at the hand. The warmth of his skin was like a sudden, glaring light, and since they’d been outside of the trial, so Dwight stayed seated, looking at MacMillan with a scrutinizing gaze. The thumb stroked his wrist, big and rough, smoothing over his skin.

Dwight sighed. He supposed he’d provoked this with the whole Scheherazade-esque thing he’d pulled to lull his captor into relaxing enough to let him escape.

He just wanted to use a human’s dire need for physical touch to his advantage, was that really so bad? Dwight chuckled, shaking his head and pulling his hand away.

“You can’t really lie down with those things in there, huh,” Dwight said, gesturing to the metal spikes and spokes in MacMillan’s left arm and shoulder. The man looked down to see but indeed said nothing.

“Have you tried getting them out?” Dwight asked, and MacMillan shook his head. Was it torture, or self-inflicted, to make himself more threatening? The more he got to know him—as limited as his perception could follow when the man was silent and endlessly inhibited—the more Dwight doubted the Trapper would do such a thing to himself.

It was ludicrous that he could consider himself getting to _know_ the killer at all. This was the man who had _murdered_ him countless times, who barely spoke, who stole him away from his friends, and who sat there like a statue, mumbling at him from beneath the mask.

“What’s it like for you?” Dwight asked, drawing his arms tightly across his chest, a slight chill coming over him. He thought about picking through the scavenged clothing for a hoody.

“I mean, the game,” Dwight clarified. “For us—the woods would just like, call us up, and we’d go to the fire, and then we’d find ourselves in the trial. I mean, even if you don’t go to the fire, it takes you. No choice…

“Does the Entity call you? Does it like, force you to kill or you can’t leave, or is it like, fun? Is it like a kick of dopamine or whatever?”

MacMillan didn’t answer, and in fact took himself away, tucking an arm under his head and acting as though he was trying to sleep. Dwight lifted one leg to the bed and folded it parallel to his hips, inspecting his pant leg and sock, picking at the texture. He hadn’t had the chance to just sit like this and consider things for a long time, without the fear of being torn away to a trial at any moment.

He knew it was foolish to expect that the Entity didn’t still have full control over his fate and that of his…captor? Was he still such, or more a fellow prisoner? Perhaps “roommate” would suffice, Dwight thought with an inner, bitter grin. Whatever he was, Dwight expected they were not entirely safe, no matter how secluded and calm their current circumstance, but for the moment, this peaceable silence was actually welcome.

“I’m just asking,” Dwight said, “I won’t think less of you if you like it—I mean, no less than I already do.”

Trying for sardonic humour was apparently something only Jake could pull off, because when Dwight gave a sly smile, MacMillan pushed himself to sitting and made to leave. He shoved Dwight at the hip, firm enough to encourage him from the bed, and to allow the Trapper passage. He stood, back to Dwight, going to the fire to stoke it like he always did when at a loss for what else to do.

Dwight sighed. Time to change the subject. “What else do you have, here? Will you show me?”

MacMillan turned a lidless gaze on him over his shoulder, the black holes of his mask reflecting a hint of light.

“You made those cuffs to tie me up that time, remember?” Dwight reminded him, brow furrowed, “so you must have a work shed or something.”

MacMillan gestured with his chin, apparently acquiescing, towards the door. Dwight followed, hands folded neatly behind his back. He peeked at the Trapper. He hadn’t said a word since that admission beside the campfire, though apparently he was very much capable of speaking. Dwight wondered what else it would take to get him to do so.

Not only was he going a little crazy talking to himself, but the more a person spoke, the more Dwight found he could relate. Not that he hadn’t gotten particularly good at communicating wordlessly, through a small gesture or subtle change in expression, while he cowered in silence behind a decrepit stack of car parts during a trial—but if they were gonna be the only two people in this entire realm, he’d prefer their interactions include the occasional conversation.

The cabin had a small porch, two feet deep at the most, protruding off of the front side. Around the side was stored a stack of firewood, in typical cabin fashion.

Dwight had been hunting exactly once with his dad around his grandfather’s old cabin—they’d seen nothing and spent the night playing cards in the woods, betwixt alpine firs, puzzle trees and singing grasshoppers. The whole ordeal had felt terribly boring at the time, but now, he would do anything to relive that boring, easy time with his father. He shook his head, patting his cheeks to startle himself out of the memory—and to keep himself from crying. Thinking about his mom and dad was not a thing he did anymore. It was too painful a thing to consider.

The back of the cabin had, as Dwight expected, a simple blacksmith’s set up. A stone furnace, large enough for a single, lengthy blade to fit inside the opening; an anvil, and a shelf to hold all of the necessary tools, stood behind the building. It was long cold and rarely used, it seemed, but for the purpose of mending weaponry.

On the bench, among the implements—bellows, tongs, and a whetstone (Dwight was grateful he’d spent so much time in medieval RPGs to know all the names)—were a few pieces of scrap metal, arranged into piles. Looking more closely, Dwight saw they were abstract but fully assembled figures in scraps of iron and steel, rudimentary animal forms and even human-like shapes. Some of them were quite impressive in their expressive style, blocky in places and sharp and dynamic in others. They were an idle artist’s handiwork.

“Did you make these?” Dwight asked of MacMillan, who stood just at his heel for the entire time outside of the cabin, as if his warden, or overzealous bodyguard, as if worried Dwight was going to bound off into the forest like a dog off his leash.

MacMillan didn’t respond, merely breathing loudly before making to reach for one of the many cleavers leaning on the side of the house. There were a myriad of different designs, some more deadly and others more aesthetically pleasing. MacMillan picked one up, closely observing the balance and sharpness of the blade, ignoring Dwight’s further curiosity.

“Right, I get it, you’re gonna cleave me for asking questions,” Dwight answered dismissively, waving a hand. He took a last look at the figurines on the shelf, feeling MacMillan’s eyeless gaze on his back.

Behind the cabin also a small stream, just a few inches deep, but enough to collect in Dwight’s palm. They didn’t need to drink in the realm, but it felt good to sip the cold, slightly acrid water and wash the back of his hands. He gathered a bucket from indoors and filled it and took it inside, if for no other reason than to play, like a child, tapping the surface and enjoying the way ripples spread out from his hands. He spotted MacMillan seated on the bed, leaning awkwardly forward, elbows on knees.

“Time to get those things out,” Dwight motioned broadly over his shoulder at the Trapper’s whole…thing, the way his flesh was rough with myriad scars and amusingly punctured with spikes up one side, like a cartoon standing too near an explosion. MacMillan just cocked his head. Dwight gave a small smile. “I don’t want you poking holes in the covers.”


	6. Healing

Neither Dwight nor MacMillan had felt the pull of the Entity for quite some time, and it only stood to reason: they were alone in the realm, now, and it had no need for them. The unseen thing was dormant, silent, like a spore, a fungus that, still infecting the entire realm, was passive and quiet in the corners of the dark depths of the forest.

Dwight went out of the cabin and sat in the frigid, sopping air of the rainforest, rubbing his arms for warmth even through the thick jacket—Jake’s, actually—he’d put on. MacMillan stood leaning against the doorframe, observing him like a hawk.

He figured he had two choices: the first was to lament his senseless fate, try to hate himself to death until time collapsed, the ground opened and the absent Entity ate him whole. The second option was to dry his eyes, move forward, and make some sort semblance of a life with what little he had. He was, after all, a luckless Millennial who’d lost more jobs than he could count—he was used to surviving on little.

The creature/monster/thing, whatever it was, that had ensnared him here was still in control of his ultimate fate, Dwight decided. But again, he’d felt what it was like to be at the mercy of forces bigger and greedier and more monstrous than his little self before. While the Entity was absent from his immediate torment, Dwight decided he’d ought to settle in and make camp. Whether it was going to be for a long while or short, he’d take it one step at a time, one project at a time.

The first was to get those nasty pieces of shrapnel out of MacMillan’s hefty right arm. He brushed off his backside when he got up from the forest floor, rotting fir needles falling away from his pants as he went back inside.

Dwight had MacMillan sit on the floor by gesturing him into place, while Dwight perched on the bed, so that he was behind and could clearly see where the metal dove into the flesh of a broad shoulder. It was stuck tight, though scar tissue did not grow around it the way that one would expect of an old wound. Like the survivors, he likely didn’t keep scars in the permanent way the living usually did: any wounds Dwight or his companions had suffered healed completely, save the ones they had received _before_ coming to the forest. So where did MacMillan’s scars come from?

Dwight braced his hand on Evan’s shoulder and pulled at the spike with the other, finding it didn’t give in the slightest. After a few tries, his palm was sweating and slid off of the violent apparatus entirely, and he sighed. He was not yet defeated, he decided, jumping up to head back to the forge.

“Be right back,” he announced, leaping, almost excitedly to the door and passing noisily through it. He was almost thrilled with the idea of getting the nasty metal out from MacMillan’s hulking body: either it was the impending sense of vicarious relief he anticipated, or the idea of having a project, just _something_ to do in this mindless, captive existence, he was bouncing off his heels as he sped around the side of the cabin.

He was all the way to the back before he’d realized that MacMillan had let him leave unescorted. He paused there, taking a cautious look around. Maybe he’d realized that Dwight now had nowhere to go, nowhere and no one to turn to but him. Or maybe he simply knew that neither of them had anywhere left but this cabin and its meagre periphery, the silence of the cold pacific forest, water, fire, and the basest of creature comforts. Nothing but memories to keep them company.

The forest around back of the cabin was so dark and socked-in with fog that it turned pitch-black not too far from Dwight’s vantage. He thought about running into it—what was that thing he’d read about in high school? The call of the void? The desire to jump off of a cliff, just to see what happened?

He turned back to the work bench and scooped up the smith’s tongs. The figurines seemed to prance excitedly at the brush of his fingers, or so Dwight’s imagination supplied, as one shaped like a wolf fell over with a clatter. He chuckled and rushed back into the cabin.

MacMillan was still seated, awkwardly with legs splayed before him and back hunched. Dwight took up behind him again and spread his knees so Trapper’s broad back was between them. This time, he pinched the barb of crooked iron with the tongs, two handed, braced against the Trapper’s back with his knee, and pulled. It started to come loose, and with it a trickle of blood, but it came out smoothly, thanks to the aforementioned missing scar tissue.

Dwight kept pulling. A good two inches came out, and still more was to come. He listened and watched carefully for signs of discomfort—well, _unbearable_ discomfort, at least, as surely there was little comfy about having shrapnel pulled out of your body. The Trapper’s shoulders tensed a little before loosening with an exhale, and he made no sound of pain, his voice expectedly absent. The bar continued to come out, until finally it slipped completely free, leaving a deep, round hole, shiny and slick with crimson.

Dwight tossed the spike in a waiting bucket, hearing it bounce off the bottom with a _tang_ sound. “Well, at least now we know you’re human,” Dwight said sardonically, and the Trapper didn’t respond. He reached back to touch the hole, apparently feeling little pain, as he didn’t so much as flinch when his fingers touched the empty spot. They drew away wet, however, and Dwight admonished him.

“Wait until the rest are out, and we’ll bandage you up,” he said, and the Trapper gave a grunt of agreement, and Dwight had the distinct image of an antelope who cleaned up the lion’s injured paw, only to be eaten later. So be it, he thought. He’d been ready to die since he’d woken up in here, what seemed to be a week ago but could’ve been hours, for all the moonlight admitted.

The next spike came away more easily, and Dwight saw that as he pulled it out, the first hole was already closing. He let out a breath of relief for the Trapper’s sake. He couldn’t imagine how good it must feel to get those out. It was likely akin to the relief of getting that forsaken hook out of your shoulder; no matter how many times it went in, the pain was as undeniable as the first time, and the relief of having it removed just as powerful.

There were five more spikes in MacMillan’s arm, bringing the total to lucky number seven. Dwight plucked them out one at a time, kneeling on the floor to get the lower ones. He had the Trapper raise his hand to his bent knee to elevate it, though he doubted he’d bleed out, if he hadn’t yet.

Kneeling in front of him this time, Dwight could watch MacMillan’s expression. While his mask didn’t change, the subtle tilt of his chin or stretch of his neck showed how intently he was watching Dwight. Feeling a bit like that idiot antelope before the lion again, Dwight looked down, pulling out the second-last spike. Blood gushed from the wound like an unplugged drain, or an abscess breaking open, just as wet, but a little less messy. The flow stopped quickly, leaving a trail of sticky red down the man’s shoulder, arm, and bare side. Right—he’d gone shirtless to avoid staining his clothing, Dwight just now remembered, face-to-face with gently heaving, tanned, dinner-plate-sized pectorals.

He pulled the last spike out, which protruded from the forearm, and the Trapper gave a small groan of pain and relief. He was breathing a little more deeply than usual, and Dwight suddenly hoped he wasn’t hiding his pain.

He dropped the tongs in the bucket and reached for the mountain of gauze he’d taken from the massive hoard of medkits he’d found by the fire. If it came to it, he knew of another few stashes among the trees nearby the campfire, in the little nooks his companions had made their individual homes, as it were. A little collection of clothing and oddities, tools for the trials and artifacts from past lives, and offerings piled reverently for safekeeping, made up each individualized space.

Dwight thought about how each place represented each survivor: Claudette’s was neat, dark, and filled with plants, leaves, dried clumps of familiar mosses, and unusual specimens from far-off locales. Jake’s place had tools for tinkering and a few select jackets. Adam’s was filled with books from the library in the school—mostly filled with gibberish and some empty, but a few with information he could actually decipher. Min’s was mostly buckwheat pillows from Yamaoka Estate, sequestered under an arm as she escaped through the gate.

Dwight’s own space was scarcely visited. There he kept the vestiges of his old life—the cap from the pizza place, the keycard from Peak 22—how and why the _hell_ that thing showed up demonstrated the Entity’s true propensity for _evil_ —a wristwatch that didn’t work, and a sturdy flashlight. There were things presented to them by the Entity to remind them of their old lives, apparently, and increase their longing for freedom, and expand in their minds, incrementally, like a speculum in an incision, the possibility of actually going back to them. Dwight spent most of his time at the fireside, curled up with Meg, her legs in his lap; or chatting with Ace, or sitting in peaceable silence with Jake.

He shook the memory from his head and folded the gauze in his hand over and back until it made a thick pad, which he pressed into the wounds on MacMillan’s arm. He did a pad for each of the seven holes, and then wrapped them with a bandage to hold them in place. Dwight had MacMillan hold the largest pad at the back with his other arm while he tied it down, working carefully but hurriedly to cover the wounds. When he was done, MacMillan’s arm was completely wrapped, from shoulder to wrist, like a mummy from an old, spooky movie that would rise from the grave and charge its foes at a shambling pace. Dwight chuckled a little at the image, and then sat back on his knees to survey his work.

“Feels better, right?” Dwight asked, receiving a nod and lift of the shoulder in reply. “Must be. When I first saw them, all I could think about was getting those things out. They must’ve been so uncomfortable. Like, giant splinters!”

He made to stand and take the soiled metal away, but just as he stood, MacMillan’s hand reached once more roughly for his arm. He caught his forearm and enwrapped it utterly with his fingers, reminding Dwight of how big he really was.

“Th…thank you,” the man said, the gruff, quiet quality of his voice scratching on the inside of his mask, as uncertain as a child saying his first words. Dwight gave him a small smile, genuine this time, and stood.

MacMillan remained seated on the floor for a long time, leaning back against the bed, likely just enjoying the ability to do so without stabbing himself. He rolled his right shoulder now and again, bent his arm and squeezed his fist, taking note of the feeling of being able to stretch and lift and turn without those ugly implements impeding him.

The mask was next, Dwight thought, determinedly.

Dwight took up a seat beside the Trapper, leaning similarly against the bed. He crossed his legs and folded his arms before him. At times such as these, the quiet downtimes between trials, the folk of the campfire would talk about their lives, or as much as they were willing to share, or discuss strategies for the next bout. Dwight rarely had to take the lead, despite being ascribed “leader” in the first of those early trials, when they all stared up at him like impatient goslings, expecting he ought to know something, having been there before they’d arrived. While he’d wanted to say _no_ , he had no frickin’ clue what was going on, he’d spoken up to the contrary instead, providing advice and good will as best he could, cementing his leadership from then on.

Outside of trials, however, he didn’t start the conversation: David, Kate, or Ash usually took up that mantle, leading the survivors in the occasional game of Truth or Dare (in which everyone was only expected to pick truth), I Never (but with invisible shots of nothing instead of liquor) or Fuck, Marry, Kill, (which resulted in much hilarity and many blushing faces). Being the one to start was a little awkward, especially when his conversation partner was as talkative as a closed door, but Dwight persisted.

“So, how did you get here?” Dwight asked, rubbing his arms, the phantom embers of the campfire licking his pale skin. “Was it just like, woke up one morning, and here you are? Or…?”

The Trapper didn’t reply, ducking his head instead. Sure, Dwight thought, probably not a good memory. Dwight’s certainly wasn’t: it was of waking up wasted and dirty and with the distinct knowledge that people he thought he could trust hadn’t given enough of a shit to even check on him the night before.

“Okay, then,” Dwight conceded. He paused a moment, chewing his lower lip. “Here’s the real question: how did you get me out?”

No reply came, and Dwight did his best not to sigh. He took off his glasses and rubbed them with the corner of his t-shirt that wasn’t soiled with smithing grime or blood. He looked down at them for a moment, inspecting the lenses and considering, deeply, his mind touching down on some unexpected part of his memory. His heart rose up in his throat just a little, and he tried a few times to say it before finally getting out,

“Why me?”

There came no reply, and peering over, glasses replaced, Dwight saw the Trapper looking stony as ever, if not more so. Unmoving, hulking, breathing silent.

There must be a reason that MacMillan chose him, out of four. Out of two dozen, actually. Was it convenience? Surely, yes. The same reason he was “chosen” for that work retreat, by virtue of being a pushover and also _there_. Present. Basically, to his coworkers, he’d fit the same criteria as a chair or a well-watered houseplant. There was nothing deeper to it, indeed. And now he was stuck here, possibly for eternity, with a random villain, together. Great.

“I took…” MacMillan began, suddenly, and Dwight’s gaze rose to him. The man’s chest rose and fell with a breath, and he rested his bandaged arm on his raised knee, drawing a long shape in the air with his finger.

“I saw a…flash of light, like that from an explosion,” he explained, “it was at the Estate. It rose into the air, a column of brightness, lighting the whole sky in orange, and floating off in ribbons. I…found you there alone.”

Dwight listened intently to the explanation, glad to hear that his captor-turned-roommate could in fact make full sentences. He nodded. A light that rose into the air? He hadn’t seen any such thing—though he was struggling to stay conscious at the time.

“How did you get me out?” Dwight asked, knowing that killers didn’t go out the gates with the survivors.

“The…Entity calls to us. We enter the trial through a hidden door which shuts behind us. We exit the same way,” MacMillan replied. He looked at Dwight for a moment before turning away, unable to hold his steady gaze. But Dwight was becoming more and more enthralled. Maybe only because these were the first few sentences he’d heard a killer speak, or anyone save himself speak for in what seemed like forever, but he wanted more.

“You say ‘we’,” Dwight noted, “do you mean the other, uh, killers? Do you know them? Do you have a way to visit them?”

MacMillan nodded once.

Now, _this_ was something! This was a _whole lot_ of somethings! A portal out of the trial, and a way to move from this place? To find, well, anyone else? Dwight’s mind raced with possibilities.

“Can you show me?” he asked, and MacMillan nodded once more.


	7. Sincere

They dressed for the occasion and got ready to venture out into the woods. Dwight wore one of David’s heavy coats and MacMillan sported a massive, moth-bitten wool duster that reached down to his knees. He must’ve enjoyed being able to wear sleeves without tearing them to pieces, Dwight thought, rather proudly.

If he were a little more imaginative, he might be able to visualize the two of them as brave wilderness explorer and his stalwart bodyguard, hacking their way through the mists with machetes, looking for King Kong. But _if_ he were a little more imaginative, it would’ve been _him_ who started a start-up out of nothing but fancy words, and _Lazar_ the worthless drone who didn’t even speak up when the boss constantly mispronounced his name.

So, imaginative Dwight was not. Nor the most strong-willed. Persuasive, it turned out, he was, and now had MacMillan basically doing whatever he asked. Not that he really much else to do, his regular gig of murdering presently furloughed. Small commands like “hold this”, “wait”, “come on”, were followed with expedience, and though Dwight wanted to take credit for the leadership skill, he knew it was probably something else, too.

The way the sullen man kept such a close eye Dwight was…puzzling, in a way. Dwight didn’t know what to make of this unusual devotion.

Dwight followed as MacMillan carefully trekked through the wood, following some specific path that only he saw. Dwight supposed it was similar to the way he sensed when his teammates were nearby, without having to see or hear them: MacMillan traced some invisible clues, weaving around trees and through narrow bends, and soon the colour of the woods changed, from a soft, grey-blue to a sour green. A small shack came into view in a narrow clearing, piled on the side with spare tires, scraps from automobiles, and discarded engine parts.

MacMillan paused, cautious, looking about, like a hound sniffing the air. After a moment he went into the clearing, letting Dwight pass him and approach the shack first. It seemed silent, dark, and lifeless.

They went inside together, finding the door unlocked and the shack indeed empty. It was arranged in the same haphazard fashion of the Trapper’s small lodge, with furniture in places that made it useless, and scrap metal strewn about. It was empty, however, and cold. No fire burned in the iron stove against the near wall.

Dwight watched the Trapper looking around. In a soft voice, he said, “Philip?” to the empty room, expectant that someone might emerge from the shadows. By the look of the décor, Dwight knew the space to belong to the killer who was invisible, so, maybe it stood to reason that he was simply hiding.

But no one emerged or appeared from the shadows. The place was entirely empty. Dwight watched the shoulders of the Trapper sink, sloping in the same defeated way Dwight had felt himself crumple only a while ago, when he’d stood at the campfire and found its welcoming logs barren as bare rock.

“Did you know him?” Dwight asked, softly. “Was he your friend?”

The Trapper didn’t reply, save to leave the room quickly. Dwight remained indoors, looking around. He found only a small sachet that seemed out of place among the wrenches and rusted parts—it was a grey sachet of cotton, filled with scented leaves and stems of some familiar herb Dwight didn’t quite know by name, but by smell. It reminded him of long, warm evenings walking home from where the bus dropped him off, a few blocks yet from his parents’ driveway, feeling chicory, yarrow and long grass brush his ankles on his walk. The sachet was like the offerings they sometimes made at the fire, and Dwight put it in the pocket of his coat, keeping it close at his hip.

Outside the shack, he found MacMillan staring, dejectedly, into the distance, sighing. He looked defeated, and Dwight moved back and forth between feelings of sympathy and spite. On the one hand, he knew precisely how it felt to be separated from his friends, but on the other, he appreciated _who_ it was that separated them.

Now _you_ know how it feels, you big creep, Dwight thought, with a bit of conceited heat that ebbed quickly away. It didn’t help to be resentful, he realized, and he got no pleasure from it.

“Let’s try somewhere else,” Dwight suggested, and the Trapper acquiesced to moving along, but looked expectantly at Dwight for direction. “Can you get to the Archives?”

They tracked backwards into the woods, to a large clearing that hosted a set of doors organized in a half-circle. They weren’t attached to any walls, but instead stood between looming, grey-dark trees, some near to them as they entered and others depressed into the wood a few yards back. Each door was decrepit is its own creative fashion: one was a rotting panel of oak, cut deep with grooves and scratches, another was iron, rusted along the bottom edge, the ruddy red stain creeping up the metal, and another was steel, sloppy with the sucker-marks of…were they tentacles? Dwight made a disgusted face as the Trapper stood and lifted a hand, gesturing broadly to the mismatched portals.

“Thanks, I hate it,” Dwight said with a faint chuckle. He didn’t want to pick a door any more than he wanted to chop off one of his toes with a rusty knife. He looked imploringly to the Trapper, who stalked over to one door that was somehow only aged instead of covered in grime. He pushed it open and gestured for Dwight to go first.

Once again Dwight heard the call of the void, as beyond the door was nothing but black, empty space stretching farther than could be seen. Walking through would’ve felt like dropping down an empty mineshaft, he thought, as he took a deep breath. MacMillan— _the Trapper’s_ —broad forearm was right there within grabbing distance, Dwight thought for a moment, ready to catch him if he actually fell. The thought was less disturbing and more comforting than he might’ve expected, until he shook it off like a dog shakes off bathwater. Dumb, pointless. Although, the holes in that mask were like mini voids, ready to be leapt through… Nope, dumb.

Dwight strode forward before another awkward thought entered his head. The darkness enfolded him, but only for a count of seconds, giving way soon to a large library with shelves stacked high, hinging into the dark distance.

This space was familiar: the Entity occasionally spat the survivors out here as some sort of cryptic reward for their troubles. Dwight remembered reading about some of the monsters with whom he fought for his life, but the details were foggy—he never was a good student. Enough to get by, sure, which was almost worse—he always felt he _should_ be achieving more, but by twelfth grade it felt like straight B’s was his destiny forever.

Looking at all of the books made him dizzy, his eyes glaze over, and memories of library period in school swim in his head. He’d remembered the way Adam lit up at the sight of the place when they’d been marooned inside together, and the way his face fell when he realized that plenty of the books were empty or filled with gibberish, much like the ones they’d scavenged from the elementary school. Dwight peered over at the Trapper, to find the brute tenderly selecting a book from the shelf, as if compelled by some force, and skimming a box-shaped fingertip down the centre of the page.

Dwight looked at the book over the Trapper’s arm, seeing inside was an article including a sepia-toned photograph of a young man, roughly handsome, with a firm jaw and proud smirk.

“Who’s that?” Dwight asked, and the Trapper jolted, immediately snapping the book closed. He shoved it back into the shelf. When it slid in between two other tomes, it seemed to melt into place, its spine unrecognizable compared to the others. Before he’d snapped it shut, however, Dwight caught a look at the name on the page in neat, typed letters: _Evan_.

Dwight plucked a different volume from the shelf. It was written about someone he didn’t know, a person whose story was unfamiliar, which was unusual, considering how intimately he’d come to understand his fellow survivors’ backgrounds: he knew Claudette’s first words (“ _mais pourquoi?_ ”), Ace’s girlfriend’s favourite…er, position…and even about Kate’s hidden piercing, for God’s sake! The book discussed Guy Montagne, a biker from the Midwest who’d gone missing in the woods. Dwight skimmed the details before putting it aside. The next book he pulled was about another stranger: Sasha Raskovnik, a skier with a propensity to stray a little too far off of the hill. A third was about Patsy Dewitt, who got lost in an alley.

“Who are they?” Dwight asked, looking up at the Trapper, who was reading ominously over his shoulder. The man said nothing, and Dwight returned to the page. It felt like he was getting an intimate look into the life of a stranger, their deepest regrets and fears and emotions laid out in front of him. He slid the book back onto the shelf.

A thinner book was pressed in between two tomes with wide spines, this one more like a journal, with a soft cover. Only the first few pages were written upon, and Dwight skimmed their contents. The writer was one B. Baker, and he or she described a familiar campfire, a posse of loosely-associated yet very close campers, and a sudden absence that shook them. Dwight recognized some idioms that looked the sort even his parents would deem passé, and considered the account rather aged.

_The trials grow easier, thanks to the familiarity my comrades and I have with them. We fear no longer death, and hope fades. Yet recently, we spotted something queer in the hideous forest: a beam of light…_

Dwight’s eyebrows rose as he read. A beam of light? Was that not the same as the Trapper reported seeing? He read on.

_It’s unknowable, this thing that binds us here, but this time it sent us a sign most clear. The light comes for each of us. Richard, Markus, Celia, and Kenichi so far have walked into the light. I only pray that they will not return._

Dwight thought on the letter Jake had left him and felt a lump in his throat. The final page of the journal said:

_It is left to me, now, and two of my companions. I leave this report as record that I was here, if this is to be the last place I’ll ever be—and I pray that I will be the very last to be trapped in this accursed place._

Dwight sniffed back tears. There was something so viscerally disturbing about reading a missing person’s journal, like the person was still alive in the words, existing now among them, the white pages and black letters his home. He closed the journal and slipped it once again away. The journal offered no answers, but Dwight knew already that the Entity was a fickle, supernatural thing that lived outside of reason. Light, disappearances, freedom, death… these were all things the Entity here controlled.

They went back to the cabin, a slow trudge bringing them finally to the doorstop, and Dwight didn’t hesitate to enter, the place as much like home as anywhere else. He sat down heavily on the bed, drawing his feet up and leaning against the wall. The Trapper stoked a fire in the stove with kindling gathered around the base of the iron stand.

“So, there were more survivors? Before I came?” Dwight asked, staring off at a far wall, his mouth and mind disconnected. He felt anxiousness in the pit of his stomach, far worse than the fear of death or dismemberment that previously occupied all of his emotional space.

The Trapper grunted in confirmation. “Twenty. Twenty-five, maybe. Thirty. One-by-one they…”

Dwight nodded, the sparse bits of information he’d gleaned going through his head like lines of code, indecipherable. The light. Baker’s journal described a light appearing and signalling their escape. But, MacMillan had said… Dwight felt a horrible crunching feeling in his gut, making him want to double over. He clenched a hand in his shirt, twisting and twisting instead.

“You said you saw a light,” Dwight said, haltingly. The Trapper stared, eyeless, crouched by the stove, poking at it like a Neanderthal. The mindless mutant. _What_ had he _done?_ Dwight’s heart swelled with unease, rage, and sorrow all at once.

“You saw a light before you took me,” Dwight put the pieces together as he spoke, his hands beginning to shake. “The journal said the light appeared before they got out. I could’ve… I…”

He couldn’t handle it anymore. He broke down, tears flushing from his lids in thick streams down his face. His voice fell to a whisper. It just hurt so, _so_ much, and there was nothing— _nothing_ left to do but feel sorry for himself. MacMillan had made sure of that.

“Why did you have to take me away from…” Dwight choked out, wiping his cheeks on the sleeves of the borrowed jacket, pulling away messy blotches of darkened, sopping cloth. “Do you…do you hate me _that much_ …?”

The Trapper strode across the floor and in seconds knelt before him, placing a hand on his knee. “No. No, no,” he said in a low, desperate tone.

Dwight didn’t have the energy to tear away, even though the touch was objectionable. This was the monster who’d kept him here, chained up like a neglected criminal. This…fiend with the hideous, unblinking mask, was staring up at him now like he deserved any more of Dwight’s bottomless patience.

He lifted a hand up, and Dwight flinched as he felt the thick palm come around his cheek, cradling it exceedingly gently. It was stone-smooth and nearly as cold, the big hand covering nearly the whole of his head. Dwight closed his eyes, opening them with a shaky breath and to a faceless, carved-open grin.

“What are you doing?” Dwight asked, sniffling.

MacMillan’s reply was to stroke a thumb across his upper lip, smearing a tear-track across his mouth. Dwight could’ve laughed, as the man’s attempt at gentleness was so ham-handed.

“You don’t even know who I am,” Dwight accused, “I don’t even know who _you_ are. You won’t even take off the damn mask...”

Hesitating for a moment, the Trapper’s hand stilled. Then, he grabbed the bottom edge of his mask and pulled it off in one smooth movement, letting it clatter to the ground.

Dwight stared at him. Under the mask was no hideous deformity, no ghostly apparition, no rotten, hideous thing of nightmares: it was— _he_ was—just a man, with a firm jaw, sallow cheeks that had gone long without smiling, dark grey eyes and a furrowed, bald brow. A scar that bisected his face was the only sign of violence in his expression, which was guileless as he regarded Dwight. And in the corner of the mouth, was a certain dimple that hinted at a long-lost arrogant smirk…

“Evan,” Dwight said, sniffling, “that’s your name, right?”

MacMillan looked at him, mouth downturned. He appeared so naked without the mask, Dwight almost felt embarrassed to see him like that. Or maybe that was the fault of their sudden closeness. It frightened and comforted him at the same time. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

“I read about you, a long time back, in the Archives. I wasn’t sure it was you…”

MacMillan nodded, but then turned away, as if he were suddenly called off to something more pressing and had to leave the conversation behind. His look was distant, as if he was remembering a past long lost, a young man who lost his life in every sense but the conventional. Dwight remembered the story: so vivid were the images, so miserable the protagonist. The details, on the other hand, seemed almost deliberately foggy.

The Trapper’s big hands remained on his knees as Dwight dried his face, scrubbing his cheeks with the back of his sleeve.

“I’m okay, now. It’s just… this really sucks, okay?” He forced out a bit of a laugh, and it came easily, borne of anxious feelings that had nowhere else to go. He continued as he smeared salty water deeper into his pores. “I have…no one. No one left.”

When he looked up, the Trapper was stood before him, mask-less, and utterly sincere. Dwight wasn’t sure what would happen right then—but to his surprise, the Trapper reached down and scooped him to his feet by lifting him by the arms. Dwight yelped and reached out for the Trapper’s shoulder for balance as he was hoisted in a rush to his feet.

He patted Dwight’s shoulders, and then looked seriously into his face. His eyes were a dark, shining pewter. Dwight stared back a moment, then, the enigmatic man spoke.

“Come with me—and bring a blanket.”


	8. Date by the creek

They went back into the woods, to the clearing of decrepit fairy-tale doors that Dwight was certain were the subject of some morality fable, where it turned out there was enlightenment behind one and a vicious tiger another. But instead, there were only the strange creations of the Entity, the landscapes scavenged from the memories of its victims, already beginning to lose some of their definition with disuse.

They went through one door, then another, through twisting wood and dreary throughways, Dwight following dutifully with blanket folded under one arm, the Trapper strolling silently on a path often trod. The colour of the wood turned from green, to grey, to black, and finally to a subtle and unfamiliar grey-blue hue as they came upon an unknown landscape.

The wood opened into a wide, wide clearing, so vast that Dwight couldn’t see the other side and expected there wasn’t one. The recursive design of the Entity’s various maps was so familiar to him now, yet this area was completely new. The clearing was carpeted in moss and lit with fireflies that hovered near to the ground.

The light was like that of a very early morning, before the sun, crystalline, clear blue as far as the eye could measure between the delicate, rustling deciduous trees, which dropped their leaves gently to the ground. Birches and aspen lined the rim of the carpet of moss, and on the far side was a creek. The water was almost completely still, excepting a small effort it made around a few rocks that peeked just above the surface.

“This space is no longer used,” MacMillan explained, “it used to be for trials, before…”

Dwight looked about in awe. The creek was silver in the starlight, but stepping closer, he could see it was utterly clear, all the way to the shallow bottom. He knelt and dipped both hands in it, cleaning his palms and up his arms, as they were soiled with blood and filth. It felt so cool and good, he wanted to sink completely into it, yet he didn’t have to, as just the small touch had reinvigorated him. It’d been long since he’d needed to drink, yet taking a sip from the cup he made with his hands was refreshing and sweet all the same.

When Dwight looked back, he saw that the Trapper had taken the blanket he’d left at the edge of the clearing and unfurled it, and was now dutifully smoothing down the corners with two palms. He then sat and patted the place beside him, beckoning Dwight sit next to him.

Dwight went to his side and took up his place easily. It felt fitting, or at least, not uncomfortable. Maybe it was just the fact that they were literally the only two people left in the perceivable world, but Dwight was… content, there. They sat closely together, listening to the sound of the creek as it trickled quietly in the clearing. Eventually, MacMillan lied down on his back, shuffling his arm under his head, watching up at the stars.

Dwight lied down beside him. He relaxed, looking up at the celestial ceiling. The stars were clear and distant, in no familiar configuration, but with a charm of their own.

“Have you tried crossing the water, seeing how far it goes?” Dwight asked, certain he already knew the answer.

“Yes; whenever I get too far I’m simply lead back to where I began. The creek leads nowhere, as does the field,” MacMillan explained.

Indeed, the Entity’s miniature worlds were inescapable; if not surrounded precisely by walls, then they were locked in by some strange force that kept its inhabitants inside. Dwight remembered walking for what seemed to be miles away from the campfire in those early, desperate days, only to find himself having been walking in circles so to make figure skater envious.

“So, what do you remember from before I got here?” Dwight asked, and MacMillan took a deep breath that lifted his entire body beside Dwight’s resting head. He let it out before answering in a typically laconic manner.

“It was much the same. There were people like you, and… like me,” MacMillan explained.

Dwight made a sound of understanding, eyes tracing the path of a firefly as it hovered across his vision. “And…before that?”

MacMillan was quiet a moment, and then, “more of the same.”

Dwight swallowed nervously, almost afraid to push further, but frightfully curious. “And…before?”

“The worst and best day of my life,” MacMillan said, cryptically. “The day it took me was the day I… I was free from…” He didn’t continue, and Dwight didn’t press.

Dwight stared at the sky with determined intensity. MacMillan had been here through three iterations of this cruel ritual, and watched three generations of clueless survivors come and go, menaced by horrific strangers. Why did the Entity hold onto him, yet release the others? Some of the killers at least, were gone, those for which their master no longer had use: or did they leave of their own accord, leaving only MacMillan to stubbornly hide out in his desolate cabin, reliving perpetual punishment?

Dwight thought about the reason that, at least in his estimation, the Entity had released his friends: they had gotten used to things. They no longer felt the crushing defeat of losing trial after trial, for they had become so…desensitized, so machine-like in their manner. Knowing there was no end, no escape from their torment was freeing. Daylight would never actually come, that was the truth of it—having hope didn’t count for anything.

So, did MacMillan still have it?

Dwight turned slightly on his side, looking over at the Trapper’s damaged chest. A wave of sympathy rolled over him, deadlier even than hope, he feared, as he reached wrapped an arm around the Trapper’s waist and held him tight.

The Trapper didn’t move to reciprocate, his body completely stiff, like an ancient golem awaiting his orders. It felt comforting to just hold someone; around the campfire they’d been known to cuddle in various arrangements, both platonic and otherwise. Loneliness abounded, as did longing, and did a need to be comforted, but indeed, hope did not.

He lay back, rested his head on the Trapper’s shoulder, and watched the unusual sky.

“Tell me about your life before all this,” Dwight encouraged, “come on. We’ve got nothing else to do. Unless there’s another unused patch of grass out there that has the internet, or beer, or something.”

“What’s ‘the internet’?” MacMillan asked, and Dwight hid from him a small smile.

“Hard to explain,” Dwight said, “you go first.”

MacMillan swallowed. Dwight felt it echo beneath his ear.

In his short, economical way, MacMillan shared the story of his strict upbringing, of the values instilled into him by a father who would accept nothing but unmatched success and respect. He talked about the death that surrounded him since he was a child, first his mother’s, then his uncle’s, then of countless overworked and underserved miners who rotted from the inside as they slaved for black gold. Dwight listened with a knot in his stomach, knowing the end to the wretched tale could not be good.

“I know I shouldn’t have followed him, yet I did,” MacMillan whispered. “He helped me, he taught me, but on occasions he…pushed me further than I could take.”

“Well, that’s abuse,” Dwight explained, “he abused you.” He recognized now where that stiffness in the shoulders came from, that ducked head, that lowered gazed—it was a little boy who was flinching, expecting a hit. In the lumbering, strong figure Dwight spotted the guiltless young boy who stood resilient against his father’s blows.

“He was my father,” MacMillan replied, slightly confused in his tone.

“You were his child and he took advantage of your trust in him,” Dwight explained, watching the distant stars hover motionless overhead.

MacMillan was silent for a long moment, and wrapped his hand around Dwight’s back, settling it on his forearm. He stroked his fingers up and down Dwight’s arm, leaving soft trails up and down the limb. Dwight took that as an encouraging sign, and smiled, though sadly. He’d long expected that the killers were only frightened and tortured into committing evils against them—well, most of them were. He believed that anyone could change in the right environment, himself included. He watched Evan’s chest, and imagined he witnessed a proud heart beating, sturdy and powerful inside.

“He was inexorable,” MacMillan went on, a tight quality to his voice. “I felt there was nothing he couldn’t do. Nothing was beyond his reach. And when he started to slip…I suppose I didn’t want to see it, so I ignored it, until it was too late.”

Then, MacMillan told the story of the accident—how his father had forced him to lead over a hundred men to their deaths. Dwight stiffened, but listened in horrified silence. The men were buried under the ground, the father raving about “starting afresh” and “staving off the darkness”, while the son worked as accomplice, ordering them down to the deepest part of the tunnel before his father set the charges to bring it to collapse.

“What happened then? Did your father get caught?” Dwight’s asked and he sat up, trying to distance himself, but MacMillan’s hand clamped down over his wrist as he sat up as well.

“No,” he whispered in a gruff tone. “I…left him to his death. Worse than that, I _made sure_ he would die.”

The man’s tone suddenly turned deadly, and Dwight felt the instinct to get away, but the grip around his forearm became a vice. MacMillan was squeezing him to the point of nearly being painful, and Dwight sat petrified in his grasp.

“What do you mean? Evan?”

“I had to… make him suffer. All he’d ever taught me was that if a man didn’t follow his instinct, he was worth nothing,” MacMillan went on, voice miserably strained. He sounded like a man possessed, and for the first time in a long while, Dwight worried for his own safety. He could see it in the creek’s shimmering clarity: the miners struggling to respire while they were suffocated and crushed, young Evan in much the same state, though crushed instead under his father’s crippling influence, trapped, unable to breathe.

“Evan, let go of me,” Dwight said softly, pulling back. He struggled, and MacMillan grabbed both of his wrists. Dwight fought and MacMillan chased him, Dwight finally ripping his arms from MacMillan’s grip. But the man remained near, crowding against him, making a fist in the blanket beside his knee.

“I left him to starve, crippled, right there in the control room,” MacMillan hissed, looking at his hand, his gaze distant, like he was watching the scene he described in abject horror.

“Evan, please,” Dwight replied, “just…”

“I thought I knew _why_ I’d done it. Punishment. Atonement for his crime. At the moment, I knew I had to…” MacMillan pondered aloud, “but I’ve had plenty of time to think about it since. What _he’d_ done was unforgiveable, but…what does that make me?”

Dwight watched in silence. He could see the misery in the man’s eyes, see the intensity in his muscles, as they were all stiff as metal.

“I never had charge over my own life,” MacMillan murmured, voice thick with a mixture of anger and sorrow, “never. Every bleeding moment was in father’s hands. But in that decision, I could… I had _control_ over my life for one wretched second.”

Dwight wondered if their stories weren’t so dissimilar. He thought about the start-up. He’d watched the boss ruin the lives of plenty of his coworkers, daresay his _friends,_ and done nothing. If Lazar had _killed_ a man, and told Dwight to just keep his mouth shut about it, would Dwight have? For just another day’s pay, and to avoid standing up for himself?

“I get it, I do,” Dwight whispered, “it’s terrifying, not having a choice in your life.” He’d experienced it plenty: he’d been dropped from dead-end jobs and crawled back to his parents for rent money. He’d bitten his tongue when customers chewed him out over things that were _their_ fault. He’d run for his life in a maze designed by an unseen entity that deigned to torment him.

MacMillan stared at him, his gaze remarkably open, dark-silver eyes reflecting the mint-blue of the grass.

“I hear you, Evan,” Dwight said, “I do.”

The Trapper’s brow softened as realization seemed to come over him, and a sound caught in his throat, strangled. He looked at his hands before quickly pulling away from Dwight, sitting up and letting Dwight move from his side. They stayed a few anxious feet apart, then, Dwight rubbing his arms, and MacMillan staring dumbly into the clear blue mist.

“You didn’t have to grab me,” Dwight mumbled, then, trying for levity, added, “it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“I’m sorry,” MacMillan said then, refusing to look Dwight’s way. His eyes were downcast.

They sat apart in anxious silence for a while, then. It was almost a shame—their picnic was proceeding splendidly at first, but their comfortable quiet was ruined by Dwight’s curiosity and MacMillan’s dismayed temper.

Dwight understood what it was like. He’d been around enough bullies to know they usually got it just as bad themselves. What sort of man was the elder MacMillan to drive Evan—who sat before him now an emotional wreck—into the embrace of cold-blooded death?

“You must despise me,” MacMillan said after long while, “I couldn’t let you go. And even now, I…”

Dwight bit his cheek. Waves of sorrow were coming off of the man like a spoor, and Dwight felt a lump growing in his throat. He’d been alone ever since that godforsaken light had appeared in the woods of the Estate; for Evan MacMillan, it’d been so much longer.

“Listen,” Dwight said, and took a deep breath. He felt like he was acting against his better judgement, sticking his little fingers directly into a bear trap or something like that. But then again, he’d done that hundreds of times before and pulled away clean, right?

“Survival isn’t just about…” Dwight began, hoping his leadership skills would kick in now that he really needed them. “It’s not just about running when you’re scared and fighting when you’re backed into a corner. It’s… about drawing people towards you, and keeping them close. Making bonds with other people, that’s how you live on. No one can make it alone.

“You couldn’t say no to your father, but you couldn’t save him either. You didn’t want to do what he asked of you, but you also didn’t want to be alone. No one does.”

MacMillan didn’t respond save to further slump his shoulders. On his severe features were nothing but shame and regret and anger, the same as ever since Dwight had first had the pleasure of his intrusive company in the cabin. Dwight wanted to scrub it away, if only for his own sanity.

“You don’t know what I was like. What I was capable of,” MacMillan said quietly, and Dwight just shook his head.

“Well, I know you now,” Dwight replied, “more or less. I know you that the feelings you have are the same as anyone else’s. People do terrible things when they’re backed into a corner. So just…”

He walked on his knees to the Trapper’s side and reached out to him, squeezing at his shoulder. He gave a wan smile which was not returned, but when he made to turn away, the man grabbed him about the waist and swept him into a tight hug, so firmly and suddenly it gave Dwight pause. When the shock wore off, he hugged back, and let MacMillan pull him down until they were curled into each other again, Dwight resting in the curve of a massive arm, his head leaning on MacMillan’s shoulder.

“Well, here’s _my_ story,” Dwight said with a grin in his voice, dropping his legs heavily down over MacMillan’s. He reached up and drew the number “22” in the air above them. “Imagine the most pretentious human being alive…”


	9. At the Hospital

Dwight picked through the collection he’d filched from the fireside. There were tinkering tools wrapped in Jake’s cargo pants, while the pockets of Claudette’s hoody were stuffed with dried mosses. He chuckled as he sorted through the mess. It felt like going through his roommates’ old things—if his roommates just up and left all of their belongings behind one day. He wondered where they were now. Free? Back in their real lives? He hoped they were safe, wherever they’d ended up.

Beneath the stack was a sketchpad—only the size of his hand, seven inches tall at the most, but brimming with sketches and messes. Kate adored making patterns of flowers and vines that would be the envy of tattooists everywhere, and Adam enjoyed sketching his fashion ideas on occasion. It was when Jeff came that he blew them all away with his creations, dark and macabre but brilliantly expressive; it was remarkable what one could do with a nearly dried-up ballpoint pen. Dwight remembered watching him smudge the ink by licking his thumb, crosshatch furiously in the shadows… it was fun to watch and dream up what the finished images might turn out to be.

He wanted to store the book as a keepsake, a memory log of what they’d been through. He parted the pages, running a finger down the crease between a sketch of a blooming rose and a bust of an imaginary woman.

MacMillan came over, having changed into workpants, boots and a stiff sleeveless t-shirt. It clung so hard around his chest and belly that Dwight wondered if he hadn’t snatched it from his collection when he wasn’t looking. At a stretch, maybe Jeff’s or David’s clothes could fit him. A _considerable_ stretch.

Dwight looked up as MacMillan watched over his shoulder. The bandage was off of his arm, and beneath it had grown a set of pale, circular welts, insignificant, really, among the collection of surviving scars on his weather-worn skin.

“Where did you get it?” MacMillan asked as Dwight handed the book over to him. He flipped through the pages with thick, knobby fingers, brow furrowing with interest.

“The hospital, I think,” Dwight pondered, “the study.”

MacMillan was skimming the pages with fascination. “There’s charcoal and graphite in here…and ink.”

Dwight straightened up to peek over the pages MacMillan held aloft. “I guess so. We found a lot of stuff in there.” He paused and considered MacMillan further. His brooding countenance was lighting up ever so slightly, his finger brushing gently over the smudged medium, until the tips came away black and silver.

“Do you draw?” Dwight asked, and MacMillan pushed the book shut. He handed it back.

“I used to,” he said.

“We can go get you some supplies,” Dwight said. Their travels made it apparent that the various sectors of the realm were open to them, and, most likely, unpeopled. “I remember where it was.”

MacMillan shook his head, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. “I’d rather not set foot where that _maniac_ resides.”

The Doctor was a special sort of beast. If the manic giggle that echoed down the halls of the hospital was any indication, he seemed to revel in the torture he was given reign to inflict. Dwight had felt the sting of his strange implement plenty enough times.

But physical pain was remarkably fleeting. It was the fear, dreading what was around every corner, that bothered him. Or, more so lately, the fear of loneliness, an endless, crushing loss… he wanted to stave off the inevitable understanding that he would never—with a capital N—be let free. They needed another distraction.

“Are you worried?” Dwight asked, getting to his feet. He put his hands in his pockets, peering up at MacMillan with wide eyes. “Don’t you think he’ll be gone?”

“No,” the Trapper replied shortly, “I don’t think he could be compelled to leave. He _enjoys_ it here too much...”

Dwight raised an eyebrow in consideration, but he started putting on his shoes and jacket before MacMillan could offer further protest. Maybe he was certain they were the only two people left in this infernal realm, or maybe he was feeling remarkably brave in the face of the Trapper’s hesitance. Either way, he wasn’t going to let some creep like the Doctor stop him from going where and doing what he wanted. “It’ll be fine. I’ll protect you.”

They went back to the wood, and this time MacMillan led them down a different path. He ported his mask in one hand and his cleaver the other, though Dwight wondered if he would find a need to use them.

“Doesn’t he have a space of his own?” Dwight asked as they traveled through a deciduous, chilly wood, the trees narrow and with smooth bark, painted with a glaze of frost. “A cabin, or whatever?”

“I don’t know,” MacMillan answered, ducking under a low branch, “I haven’t had the opportunity to ask. We aren’t exactly close.”

“Were you close with the Wraith?” Dwight asked, and MacMillan’s back went stiff.

“I suppose,” MacMillan said, “I’m glad he’s… if he’s…”

Dwight nodded. “Me too. I mean, for my friends.”

They came to the right door, its veneer unmistakeable—Lery’s Memorial was etched boldly into the nameplate, and the white paint peeled around its edges. They stepped into complete dark and emerged into the cold, echoing hall of the hospital, where grass pricked through the ground here and there through scattered tiles and musty drywall.

MacMillan looked around, like a hunter checking for danger. He let his mask dangle around his wrist by the cords and held his cleaver in a tense grip at his side.

There was no sign of the Doctor when Dwight led them quietly to the study. An antique desk had two drawers brimming with strange goodies: broken jewellery, a watch, scraps of paper written with nonsense, and, to MacMillan’s silent delight, pens and pencils. There was even a stick of graphite and a box of charcoal. Nibs for an ancient brass pen were in another box. Dwight filled his pockets with the smaller items. And there, on the shelf, they found drawing pads in different sizes, from the width of a dime novel to the length of the forearm, big and broad and bold. The papers were weathered and yellowed but blessedly blank as MacMillan inspected them before tucking them under his arm.

“We should go,” MacMillan said, and in the moment that they departed the study, they heard it—a high, distant cackling.

Dwight ducked automatically behind the desk. He gestured for MacMillan to do the same, tugging at his pant leg, but there was no hiding the six-foot-whatever hulk of a man. Even crouched behind a window frame he was large and distinct.

The laughing was sporadic and broken by the occasional fizzle of a spark. Dwight flinched at the sound. It’d been too long since he was in danger—his heart was racing like he was a newbie again, scrabbling confusedly about for an exit, crying and trembling and biting his fingers. He took a deep breath and tried to figure out the distance of the sound.

When the sound seemed to recede left, they ducked right and snuck back towards the door whence they’d come. The Doctor was mumbling to himself in the distance, odd ramblings and anxious mutters. Dwight wondered how many times he’d circled the empty halls, just waiting for prey to stumble in. Maybe Evan was right about staying away.

But there was no changing it now. They had to get out. He kept his head down and crept down the hall.

The stretch of hall that held the means to their escape was in view, and Dwight made a quick leap to it, MacMillan following, when there came a quiet moan of delight and the Doctor stepped into view, blocking their egress.

“Wh-wh…what’s this?” the Doctor said sloppily, as if unused to talking. In his hands he ported his hideous weapon, and on his face was that frozen grin.

Dwight flicked his gaze from the Doctor to Evan, and saw a darkness come over the latter’s face he hadn’t seen before. He drew himself to full height, grasping his weapon at his side.

“It’s you! Oh, my dear boy,” the Doctor intoned with fanfare, his voice rising through octaves as he spoke. His wide eyes flicked back and forth in their sockets.

MacMillan didn’t answer, but to circle closer. The Doctor took a step aside, and then they were walking around each other, neither willing to concede an inch of space.

Dwight had the distinct image of being in a cougar’s territory. They were intruding in a predator’s space.

“Let us through,” MacMillan said, voice low like Dwight hadn’t heard it before. It made him shiver. He was between the Doctor and the door, now, with MacMillan pressing in from the opposite side. If he was stealthy, he could probably make it free. But he couldn’t leave Evan—and besides, the door, which had never been open to a survivor before, probably would not admit him alone.

“Why would I do that?” the Doctor said, tipping his head in a whimsical way. His mouth, pinned open, was dribbling a little with saliva. It shone on his sickly, grey-green skin. “It’s been so long since I’ve gotten to play. Can’t we have fun with him together?”

MacMillan bristled and seemed to grow, hackles rising, chest lifting as he stalked towards the Doctor. He made it within an inch of his face and stared him down, mask-less glare burning, when the Doctor raised his pointed weapon and poked it into Evan’s chest.

“Ah-ah,” the Doctor uttered, “so he’s all for you? You’re keeping him all for yourself? How selfish.”

MacMillan grabbed the weapon by the business end, the spikes and wires digging into his palm as he wrenched it from the Doctor’s hand and tossed it away. Dwight snuck over and kicked it further from the villain’s reach.

“Come on, now, dear boy,” the Doctor whined and lifted his hands in surrender, though his voice was still jovial through that forced smile, “they’ve all left me. My lovely little subjects. And I’m feeling empty. You must feel it, too.”

Dwight flinched as MacMillan grabbed the Doctor by the front of his coat and throttled him. The Doctor raised his hands to grip the arm holding him, laughing exuberantly as he did so.

“Yes, yes, that’s what I mean!” he chuckled even as MacMillan shook him once again. His fingers were digging tight into the Trapper’s arm. They were mismatched in size, strength and temperament—the Doctor giggling gleefully as MacMillan _fumed_.

“You know what I’m talking about—the hunger, the ecstasy of breaking their little minds, ruining their bodies—” the Doctor let out a pleased giggle, “you must miss it like I do…”

Dwight yelled as the Doctor kicked MacMillan in the shin, forcing his grip to loosen. MacMillan stumbled as the Doctor brought an elbow down into the crook of his, breaking his hold and causing him to drop his cleaver. He then struck MacMillan in the stomach, doubling him over and making him groan in pain. Sparks danced on his fingertips as he shook out his wrist. The Doctor deliberated a split second, then, between approaching Dwight and making for his lost weapon—he chose Dwight.

Dwight, crouched behind a battered gurney, stared up at the Doctor in terror. He’d faced the fiend so many times but the fear never lessened—in fact it was multiplied by the memory of what that weapon, what those terrible hands could do.

“Come on, just a little bit, let me _treat_ you, my dear thing,” the Doctor said, “you’re ill.” His footsteps fell nearer. His height towered, and his frame was like an enlivened corpse, stiff and looming. Dwight smelled rot and antiseptic. “You’re practically feverish. You’ve got the chills.” Sparks flashed from his fingers and the wires that looped through his limbs. “Let me see you!”

As he lunged for Dwight, rotten green palm stretching out to snatch him up, MacMillan leapt at the Doctor’s middle and collided hard, knocking him off balance. The Doctor tottered but didn’t fall, so Evan socked him across the face with a stone-hard fist. He fell then, groaning and giggling with a mix of trepidation and delight, catching himself on one elbow and rubbing his jaw with the other hand. Saliva dribbled from his forced-open lips.

“See, what did I say? I knew you m-missed it. Violence becomes you, dear boy,” he said, getting to his feet and jumping for MacMillan again.

They tussled, pulling at each other’s clothes, each trying to pull the other down or toss him into a wall. They were evenly matched, it seemed, and Dwight watched in horror as MacMillan narrowly evaded a blow to his chin, and took another full in the stomach. MacMillan let out a growl and lunged forward again, this time landing a clean hit that sent the Doctor to the ground.

When he struggled to get up, MacMillan struck him, hard, again and again, in the face, until the Doctor was laughing and flinching and crying out like a madman. Blood sprayed from either his mouth or MacMillan’s knuckles, Dwight didn’t know, and stared, repulsed, as the Doctor finally lowered his hands and lay still. MacMillan stepped away only when he was sure the villain was down.

The Doctor lay prone and sighing happily, oddly satisfied, in some terrible way. His breathing was wretched and interrupted by a few wheezy coughs. “That’s it,” he panted, “isn’t it wonderful?”

MacMillan stalked past him, never lowering his eyes or dropping his shoulders as he went to the hidden door. Dwight quickly gathered up all of their scattered supplies—the sketchpads and pens—and rushed after.

They hurried back to the cabin, Dwight watching MacMillan’s back carefully, seeing the dreadful strain that had just been beginning to leave his body there again in full force. His shoulders were tight, his hands in fists, the muscles of his arms taut like steel cables, twisted until the tension was just on the threshold of popping and tearing itself apart. Dwight hurried to match MacMillan’s long strides, looping through the wood, the different colours and auras flashing by until they were home, the door shut behind them.

Dwight laid out the art supplies on the floor as he warmed himself by the stove, his back to the heat. The air of the hospital was frosty and a chill had set in deep, even through the layers of his jacket and hoody—and it wasn’t only due to the temperature. The look of anger…sheer, brutal anger in MacMillan’s eyes as he struck the Doctor, and dodged the Doctor’s nasty limbs and lightning-quick strikes… it still bore a frightening shadow across his mind.

He shook the image clear from his head and inspected the art supplies. The only casualties were a couple of the charcoal sticks, which were broken in two sometime between picking them up and travelling in Dwight’s pocket. The corner of one sketchpad was crushed but otherwise they were all clean and ready.

MacMillan seemed hardly in the mood, however. His was sitting on the sofa, his hands faintly shaking as they hovered between his knees. His gaze was in the flames crackling in the stove.

“Everything…” Dwight thought about asking if he was okay, and thought otherwise—the answer was an obvious no, and he didn’t want to give Evan the excuse to stop talking to him again. “Everything seems to have survived.”

MacMillan didn’t respond. He was looking at his fingers, where the knuckles were split open and seeping vibrant blood.

Dwight took a pan from the defunct kitchen and filled it with water from the river, then he sat on the floor between the Trapper’s knees and reached for one big, damaged hand.

MacMillan tore it away.

Dwight paused, dipping a wad of gauze in and out of the pan, watching the way it expanded in the water, turned dark and heavy with it.

“It’s alright,” he said, putting out his hand for MacMillan to give it. He finally did, after a tense moment.

Dwight washed his knuckles under the cold water, soothing down the torn edges of his cuts, wiping any dirt away. His hands were so large and heavy, and hard; Dwight compared them to his own soft, thin fingers. His own hands had seen neither labour nor violence in his whole life, where MacMillan’s were thick and calloused with it. Scars crossed the fingers and the back of the hand, working all the way up his wrists and arms.

Dwight cleaned the other hand, and dried them both with gauze, squeezing the blood out into the pan until the water was a rusty pink. He put it aside and continued to sit, legs crossed, at MacMillan’s feet, looking up at him.

The Trapper looked a little more calm, the tension still tight across his shoulders and neck, but his eyes were no longer clouded with anger. His face softened, he inspected his hands, arms, and then, swiveled about, looking for something missing. His mask and cleaver, Dwight realized, he’d left at the hospital. MacMillan looked worried, eyes darting around for a moment before he seemed to deflate, realizing what had happened.

“Why d’you want to bring the mask, anyway?” Dwight asked, pulling down the sleeves of his hoody, after he’d rolled them up to clean the Trapper’s hands. It’s not like the veneer of wood and bone would conceal his identity—the Trapper’s massive silhouette was unmistakeable.

MacMillan took a deep breath, his chest rising with it. “It lets me hide,” he muttered.

“From what?” Dwight tilted his head.

“From what _it’s_ made me…from what I’ve become,” MacMillan explained, gaze going distant. “It’s not what I really am. The mask is…not me.”

Dwight looked at him with curiosity. “Well then…what are you, really?”

MacMillan raised his hands to cover his face, dragging them down his chin as he let out a frustrated groan. “It feels like everything I am is…controlled by… Nothing but anger, violence. What does that make me? Are we not what we do? Is a man not the sum of his actions, from the most heinous to the most…the most…” He was asking himself, as if working out something deep and dark he hadn’t had the chance to put words to before.

“Well, it’s…” Dwight sat up on his knees. He stammered a moment before getting out, exasperated, “no one can decide what he is except the person himself! So what is it you…what do you _want_ to be?”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” MacMillan answered, quietly, “not anymore. No more violence, no more anger.”

Dwight let out a breath. He’d expected for a while that the Trapper had soured on violence, or even hated it from the start… and the ruined expression that was apparent on his face after a single non-lethal bout showed how exactly it took a toll on him.

And Dwight knew what it was like to wear a mask. His wasn’t made of bone, but flesh. The number of times he’d said “I’m fine” when he felt miserable, or was forced to address a customer with deference and self-respect when he felt nothing of the sort inside, was beyond counting. It was his superpower, after all. What was once a weakness he’d developed into a tool for survival in this wretched place, and kept it firmly secured over his face even now.

“I get it,” Dwight said, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. He reached for MacMillan’s hand and inspected the wound one more time, seeing that it was healing speedily, though still faintly swollen and red. He put his hand then on MacMillan’s shoulder, giving a quick squeeze and a healing smile.

MacMillan grabbed his wrist. Dwight gave a small jolt of surprise. On his feet with MacMillan seated their eye lines nearly matched, so great was the difference in their sizes. There was still a small thrill in that, the idea that MacMillan could surely crush him with one hand yet would not, and Dwight felt a flutter in his chest as one big palm came up to cradle his cheek, fingertips gently pushing through the curls over his ear.

Then, MacMillan was kissing him. It was a soft, desperate push of lips against his. A warmth and a sigh spread across his face as he let his eyes fall shut.


	10. Honesty

Dwight lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He’d been trying to read a book they’d taken from a house in Haddonfield: some silly suspense novel with stakes not nearly high enough to keep his attention. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be frightened of a scary movie ever again, now that he’d lived the plot of one over and over. He was half-paying attention to the book while he pondered their next move, but eventually lost interest entirely and dropped the novel, open, onto his chest.

He ran his fingers across his lips, ruminating silently on the memory of MacMillan’s mouth against his. He let a small smile cross his face, though it faded quickly to be replaced with a puzzled brow. It felt good to be pursued—god knows it had been a while—but he didn’t know if he could reciprocate. There was something ominous about being the last two men in the known world (monsters notwithstanding): surely it was just desperation and loneliness finally driving them mad.

He swallowed thickly and peeked over at MacMillan, who was hunched over a sketchpad and working furiously. His big fingers engulfed a tiny graphite stick, which coated his fingers in a pewter sheen as he scrubbed it across the page. When he looked up, Dwight tore his gaze quickly away, blushing.

It was harder to look at MacMillan now and not notice certain things about him. Like how strong his shoulders and arms were, how wide his chest, how piercing his gaze. Even the quirk to his lip belied a charm and wit he was holding captive within himself, hidden. His hands were powerful but were still capable of utter finesse, if the delicacy with which he handed a pencil was indication. Dwight felt heat come over his cheeks.

His drawing evidently finished, MacMillan drew back, tilting his head this way and that before ripping the page from the pad and placing it on the table he’d dragged out from its pile in the corner of the cabin. He’d managed to find a matching pair of chairs that weren’t broken, and in a fit of energy had tossed the others outside, breaking them into pieces to add to the collection beneath the stove. Then he’d taken up a seat and started drawing, staring down at the empty page for a long while before setting to work.

Dwight walked over to look over his shoulder. He shouldn’t’ve been too surprised to find a sketch of himself, but it made his heart swell just the same as he scooped it from the table and examined it.

“It’s…good.” The sketch was of his own face, and captured keenly the roundness in his cheeks and the starkness of his brows. In the portrait, he looked half-way between content and worried, his expression rendered in graphite in alternating dark lines and soft smudges for shadows.

“You’re surprised?” MacMillan asked, raising a brow.

“No, I…” Dwight shook his head and placed the drawing back down. He sat at the other dining chair, leaning on his elbows on the table to watch the artist’s process. Among the other sketches were a woman in a reclined pose, a few nude figures conjured from memory, and a few images of the claw-like fragments of the Entity. Dwight swept his fingers over the image, imagining the pointy claws digging into his chest and giving a shiver.

“Were you an artist?” he asked.

MacMillan snorted. “No, indeed. My father would never allow it. He beat me so severely when I made even the slightest motions towards not following in his footsteps.”

Dwight flinched on the man’s behalf. He couldn’t imagine being harmed by the one who was supposed to protect him; his own parents were exceedingly kind and fair people, whom Dwight sorely missed when he thought on them too hard.

“Do you know he once broke my jaw?” MacMillan confided, “and my arm. Twice. My mother’s, too.”

Dwight wanted to reach out and comfort him, but it felt… a little too intimate, now, considering what they’d done. After the kiss MacMillan had stood and cleared his throat, stating his intention to chop wood for the fire. Dwight nodded quickly and left for a walk in the wood. He’d made a few circles of the surrounding forest, his path always leading him back to the cabin or the campfire, no matter in which direction he tread. His hands stuffed in his pockets and his hood pulled up, he’d thought deeply about what had happened.

Were they… an item, now? Or was it just a friendly kiss, or one of comfort? Would it happen again? Would he _want_ it to?

“When did you learn to draw?” Dwight asked, firmly evading the subject that was on his mind.

“I realized my interest in it when I was young,” MacMillan answered, “I would’ve liked to study it more, but, well. I found… it was a good way to express my thoughts.”

Dwight peered over at the drawing he was currently working on. It was a man suffering injury, his body contorted awkwardly, blood and wounds littering his extended form. The figure was twisted into a miserable shape and was being penetrated with blades and weapons.

“It is rather gruesome,” MacMillan admitted, covering a part of the sketch with one hand while he drew with the other, seeing the concerned face Dwight must’ve pulled.

Dwight shook his head. He wondered what or whom the figure represented, but he had a feeling he knew. “It’s better than actually stabbing someone, right?” Better to work out his emotions on paper than in the flesh, Dwight thought.

MacMillan stopped drawing and closed the book, pushing it aside, and Dwight regretted his comment. But it felt like something they hadn’t talked about: the amount of times MacMillan had hurt him, and the fact that, if patterns continued, he may be called upon to do so again.

“I never meant to…” MacMillan said, “it wasn’t my choice. I’ve never wanted to.”

Dwight wasn’t sure if he could believe it, but MacMillan hadn’t lied to him before. He’d shown his vulnerabilities, his weaknesses, and on paper, his inner pain.

“I know, I get it: it was a tool for survival. It’s how you survived,” Dwight replied, “people do what they need to to survive.”

MacMillan was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “and what do you do to survive?”

Dwight paused, looking down at his hands on the table. He picked at a hangnail until it stung before getting out, “I lie.”

“How do you mean?” MacMillan stared at him. His jaw was so hard, Dwight expected he could break rocks with it, and his stare earth-rending—he was handsome in an uncompromising, uncomplicated way that made Dwight’s heart twinge. He swallowed.

“I twist my words, I omit truths,” Dwight explained, shrugging. His heart hurt, aching with memory. “I tell people what _I_ need them to hear.”

MacMillan continued to stare. He sat forward, leaning into the table. “Why?”

It burst out, exasperatedly. “Because it’s all I have! I’m not strong, I’m not smart, not talented—” Dwight gestured to the expressive sketches spread across the table like autumn leaves, “all I have is my words.”

He stood up. He had to leave again. He didn’t feel ashamed of what he did to survive, but he felt vulnerable, now, broken open. It was hard to admit that he was feeling something on the inside that he didn’t express. He hated having feelings, honestly. It would be so much easier if he could just be honestly and composedly stoic, like Jake, whom nothing seemed to bother, or David, who expressed his pain easily and smiled when he did, or MacMillan, who...knew both brutality _and_ vulnerability. Who had learned both esteem and terror, and knew them both well.

MacMillan stood and took Dwight by the arm, encouraging him to stand as well. Dwight dragged himself to his feet, wiping his cheek with his thumb to realize there was wetness there. He felt pathetic. MacMillan took his hand and swept the other around his back, falling low to the centre, gently pushing him close. Then he walked them to the centre of the floor, until they were swaying and stepping in some subdued version of a dance.

Dwight chuckled lightly and put his hand on MacMillan’s arm, gently smoothing down the cotton ridges of his shirt. It was incredibly awkward, but it’s not like anyone was around to see them. Dwight looked up to see MacMillan looking off, away from him, a peaceful look on his scarred face. He drew Dwight closer with the hand on his back, until they were chest to chest, and looked down at him with a tiny, hidden smile.

“What do you see in me?” Dwight asked, torpidly, on a sigh. He felt like he was suffocating under his feelings, and remembered then why he usually hid them.

MacMillan paused a moment, stepping from foot to foot, more of a sway than a dance. “Honesty.”

Dwight huffed out a laugh. “Well, then, you’re a moron.” He grinned, toothy and awkward. “How’s that for honesty?”

MacMillan drew him against his chest, pulling him into a tight hug. Dwight put his cheek on the man’s chest, and beneath it, felt the quick, steady beat of a heart, and tried to match his own to it.

***

They travelled to the vacant Ormond. The snow sparkled dully when it fell, never melting and never accumulating on the sodden ground, falling here and there between piles of broken mountaineering equipment and rotting wood. It reminded Dwight of ski trips with his parents when he was a gangly teen, awkward and clumsy and entirely embarrassed in front of the good-looking and sporty types, they far more skilled than him, on the slopes.

They cuddled by the fire and though Dwight felt the occasional twinge of fear, the feeling that a deranged teenager with a knife would come through the open wall at any moment, he was mostly relaxed. They’d piled pillows into the pit around the fireplace and sat leaning together, Evan drawing excitedly in his sketchbook, a long duster wrapped about his arms and torso, shielding him from the cold. Dwight wore a few layers of coats borrowed from his larger cohorts and imagined himself wrapped in their arms. He hadn’t his fellow survivors nearly enough when they were…well, “alive” didn’t really suit what they were.

He looked over both shoulders before pulling out the book he’d pilfered from the archives. It felt almost ominous, but what were the books there for if not to be read? He’d gone back for B. Baker’s journal, curious of what further secrets it held. It was a messy tome, with handwritten sections and tabs and notes folded and glued in. Some of it was gibberish, and he’d cheekily asked Evan if his turn-of-the-century education included French—Evan had scoffed.

“Does learning French have anything to do with _mining?_ ” he asked, and Dwight chuckled. “Then, no.”

Dwight longed for the help of his many bilingual teammates, counting off in his head and realizing that it might be _only_ he who spoke only English. Yeesh. He swore if he ever got the chance, he’d pick up those beginner Spanish books again. But he had a feeling the language in the book was actually gibberish. A lot of the books they found during trials were just that—scribbled placeholders thrown in by the Entity in a sloppy bid for realism.

The parts of the book that were legible spoke of rituals, some familiar and some not. There were the trials, unfamiliar enemies and unknown allies, as well as some places well-known to Dwight. The book was tabbed with folded corners, loose sheets and notes sticking out of every edge—top, bottom and side. He skimmed and searched, not expecting to find anything of use until a curious page fell open across his palms. It was a list of items for…

Dwight felt his heart climb into his mouth as he read, and he frowned at the lines, scanning them over and over. He wasn’t sure why it intrigued him so, but he nodded along with the concept as he took in the text.

“Evan,” he said softly, voice coming out weak. He cleared his throat.

MacMillan made a sound of interest and kept drawing, the scrape of his pencil the only noise save the crackle of fire in the pit, the snow outside blanketing all else, creating an eerie silence.

“If there was a way to get _to_ the Entity,” Dwight asked, “would you want to?”

MacMillan paused a moment and then put his sketchpad aside. He leaned away from Dwight to look at him more clearly, examining him as if he were ill. In Baker’s confident scrawl was described a method for reaching the centre of the realm:

_It is like a spider’s web—with it in the centre. The arms coil out in lengths of land, tracts extending through the woods._

All that was needed to summon themselves to the Entity’s space were three items: an offering, a sigil, and a fire. It wasn’t unheard of; Dwight knew the power of offerings was salient in this place. Would there be any use in seeking outright the thing that held them here? The force that had brought them here? Could it be reasoned with? Was it even… like, sentient?

Dwight’s eyes glazed as he read the spell over and over. For a long while, he’d imagined the Entity as some sort of cruel, faceless God that ruled over the world, unseen and unproven. Like, it only existed because they believed in it. He’d even tried to block it from his mind, thinking, maybe, if he denied it hard enough, it would cease to exist. On other occasions, Dwight imagined a hungry animal, running on the instinct to feed, blind to anything but its primeval drive. Other times, he saw a hateful, spiteful unearthly being, designed by celestial forces and corrupted by hatred and isolation. It didn’t speak, didn’t reason, didn’t even hurt them directly: it had _others_ do its bidding, only appearing in a spindle of hideous, poking limbs at the last second to suck their lives away.

“Is it really possible?” MacMillan asked cautiously, reading the page over Dwight’s shoulder.

“Looks like it,” Dwight mumbled, “would you…want to?”

“To confront the villain that imprisoned me here?” MacMillan said, curiously levelly, “I suppose I do have a few questions for it.”

Dwight felt a prickle of awful _anger_ in MacMillan’s voice, and a slight tremble in his leg where it was pressed against Dwight’s. He slid the book closed and put it down. He certainly had questions of his own. And what else was there to do, now, besides vacation in recursive nighttime locales, ever awaiting the moment they would be made slaves to the violent trials again?

The journal spoke of an offering—a grey satchel, unusually soft and smelling of wilting oak leaves and chicory. Dwight pondered a moment before remembering the thing he’d picked up in the Wraith’s cabin. Surely that was it. And the sigil they could draw in the cabin in charcoal in a circle around the fire in the stove. It was nearly too easy.

“Can it really be done?” MacMillan asked, and the anxious look in his eyes made Dwight’s heart give a protesting thump.

What if it was a trap? What if it sent them into danger? He didn’t want to risk them, not after what had happened with the Doctor. Death, Dwight no longer feared, but the unique suffering of the trial—the loss of control, the anxiety, the cloying, ruthless _hope_ —scared him. And he had a new sense of responsibility—nonsensical as it was—of protecting…Evan.

It didn’t make a lot of sense that Evan would need any of his protection, especially considering how their latest brush with danger had gone: Dwight had cowered while MacMillan fought off the Doctor like a bodyguard from some macho-man movie. But there were things other than physical danger people had to worry about. Those were things that Kate and Claudette and Laurie knew better about—how to protect the mind, how to cushion the heart when it fell. Dwight swallowed.

“We can try it,” he gave an uneasy smile. “What’s the worst that can happen?”


	11. Entity's voice

At the cabin, Dwight picked through his eclectic pile of coats, seeking the unfamiliar offering. The layers of clothes were like colourful autumn leaves, flannel and jersey and polyester in gaudy patterns piling up and up beneath the bed. He rooted around and finally retrieved the pouch—it was grey and silken, and bringing it to his nose he smelled the sharpness of potent herbs. It reminded him of the potpourri in his grandma’s house: sugared petals gathered in a small ceramic pot in the bathroom, filling the room with a flowery and bitter scent.

He wondered why the Wraith had it—was he planning something? Or had it merely been left at the garage by another passerby? Dwight wondered if the Wraith was like MacMillan was under his mask—human and hurting.

“What do you think we’ll find?” Dwight asked, taking a seat on the bed. MacMillan was holding the journal in one hand, copying the sigil, inscribed on a jutting leaflet, onto the floor surrounding the fireplace. He sidled awkwardly on his knees, the effort of crouching rather monumental for a man his size, Dwight couldn’t help but notice. Dwight knew that if he were MacMillan’s height, he’d be hitting his head on plenty of doorways. Dwight imagined him in a tunnel lit by candlelight, heaving a pickaxe into the stony wall, and towering over his fellow miners while he did so. It was a titillating image—though he could just as easily conjure one far less pleasant.

He saw a boy, tall and broad but still green, barely on the edge of adulthood, cowed by his father, his neck and shoulders stiff as a toy soldier hewn of brass, his head lowered, his gaze weathered—MacMillan under the elder’s brutal tutelage. Pushed beyond what he could handle, or what anyone should be expected to. Made to hurt, to push, to force.

And then, delivered he was from his father’s clutches only to fall into another’s. Made a slave, a moving scarecrow, compelled by the unseen Entity that whispered in his ears. No control over his body, or his fate. MacMillan had confided that the Entity “called to” them, and Dwight could only imagine how its “voice” might sound.

He shook the image from his head, afraid that if he lingered any longer on it, he’d feel the need to call this whole expedition off. What was the point of putting themselves through more torment? Why not just settle in by the fire and rest… until they were ripped away and forced into the trials again—

“I expect we won’t know it until we see it,” MacMillan explained, “I’ve long thought it doesn’t have a physical presence, or rather, its physical form is inconsequential—if that makes sense.”

Dwight squeezed the pouch in his hand. He sort of understood—the thing that menaced them he’d often imagined as an invisible god, a ghost, a spirit in the machinery of the world. He didn’t know if it was malicious, or behaving by instinct like a hungry predator.

But what he did know for sure was that Evan was rather brilliant. Watching him move easily around the elaborate design on the floor, and speak with eloquence undimmed by what could’ve been _decades_ of imposed silence, Dwight admired him greatly. Old-fashioned, stiff in his mannerisms, he was, but strong, smart, and exceedingly talented, as even the few effortless sketches Dwight had seen indicated—

Hold on. Now _really_ wasn’t the time for that. Dwight patted his cheeks, finding them warm.

The sigil completed, MacMillan stood and looked over his handiwork, turning his head to try and see that he’d lined up his drawing with the sketch in the leaflet.

“Ready?” Dwight asked, hoping, for a sudden, intense second, that he would answer no.

“I think I am,” MacMillan replied, and stood away from the stove as Dwight placed the offering into it. The linen pouch smoldered a moment among the yellow fires, melting and pooling against a log before stuttering aflame, turning black as it was slowly consumed.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and Dwight thought they were deceived by the ramblings of a diarist gone mad. But then the fire, turning from orange to white to grey, rose, spreading out, wider and wider until it was leaving the confines of the iron stove. It bloomed, like a pale chrysanthemum, spikes of dwindling flame spilling out across the floor, engulfing the room.

Dwight stepped back in shock, only to find that the flames held no heat, and flowed past him without even touching his flesh or clothes. The cabin was filled with the grey plumes and dancing white sparks, which circled around the pair of them, caught in their wide-eyed wonder. There was a heave of fire, and then a dark portal arose in the midst, a wide-open mouth in a broad oval shape. He looked over to Evan, who shot him a serious glance, tinged with worry, before the portal widened further and took them both in.

They found themselves next in a dark and empty landscape. Here was only stone; there was no wood, no moss, and no flame. It took a moment for Dwight’s eyes to adjust to the pitch-black sky, and then to see the rocks and barren earth around them. There was no light and no sound, and Dwight was suddenly far more terrified than he would be facing any number of deranged evils—in the moment, he would readily _kill_ to see a killer to appear and menace him with whatever implement she chose. It would be better than this silent horror.

He spotted MacMillan in the dark, afraid even to call out to him. For some reason, he was petrified of breaking the silence. He reached out instead, letting out a whimper as he caught MacMillan’s fingers. MacMillan immediately snatched up his hand, enwrapping it in his broad palm. They moved together, in stride and without speaking, compelled in any direction and none, moving across the terrible empty.

Soon, a light (because it was always light and dark, that’s all there was) rose in the blackness, distant, pinkish-red, like a mold growing on the rock. They approached, and with increasing speed as the patch of light grew wider. It glowed out of the ground, as, Dwight realized with exasperated dismay, did the light coming from a basement.

When they made it close enough, the light from the hole revealed a set of stairs descending into the ground. It illumined their faces and bodies, too, revealing to Dwight a MacMillan who was oddly transfixed upon the seeping glow. His pewter eyes were glassy, his mouth gaped slightly open. Dwight had the awful feeling that if he called out to Evan, at that moment, he wouldn’t answer. Evan hand slipped out of his.

After only a minute of apparent quandary, a questioning look glancing over his features, Evan went down the stairs, taking them step by heavy step. Dwight was loath to follow—but making the mistake of looking behind him, seeing the endless, pitch-black purgatory through which they’d ventured, he was struck with further dread. He went down the stairs, shivering with fright as he did.

The steps were in many makeshift materials—stone, wood, metal, raw clay from beneath the eerie earth. The walls that surrounded them were also a collection of oddities, materials gleaned from all corners of history, as well as some that he didn’t recognize. Ruddy, slimy lichen and cement in unusual colours clung here and there on the walls. And all around Dwight could feel the odd pulse of the Entity, its sound inside his chest like a booming tachycardia, growing louder as they went down into the earth.

The bottom of the stairs opened into a huge, sprawling room, Dwight assessed with a thick swallow that caught in his throat. It was pitch dark, save a bubbling yellow and reddish glow that floated like streetlights in the fog. In its centre was an amorphous mass, black and grey and red and seething, struggling over itself like waves, appendages spooling nonsensically out from its centre, like the spurs of a monolithic spider.

Dwight realized, somehow, deep in his subconscious that what he was seeing was only what _he_ was seeing—perhaps influenced by the description in the journal, or the memory of the Entity’s scornful claw spearing through his back, he saw the Entity in this symmetrical, roiling form. It could’ve just as easily been a colossus, a dragon, or a pile of goo, he thought, as he looked upon it, pressed as near to the edge of the room as he could be.

Dread filled him, but it wasn’t for himself, precisely—indeed, he’d faced this enemy so often and always recovered. And besides, he had the distinct understanding that it did not want to rid itself of him. No, he worried instead for Evan.

The hulk of a man was stalking forward, just slowly, one step before the other, his eyes raised to somewhere high on the mass. Dwight wondered what he was seeing, what form the evil took. MacMillan crept nearer, back straightening, hands falling limp at his sides. His defenses lowered, resistance melting from his bones. Dwight looked between him and the monster undulating in the centre of the room.

“Evan,” Dwight whispered, and then louder, “ _Evan._ ”

There came no reply, and Dwight felt like something had clamped down on his heart. He watched as Evan walked closer and closer to the Entity, close enough for its cloying limbs to reach out and embrace him if it so chose, to wrap him up and take him away.

A quiet sound came from MacMillan and Dwight realized there were faint words falling from his lips. His deep voice skewed high, pleadingly so as he spoke to a silent room.

“I did…” MacMillan whispered, “… _everything_ you asked. I did.”

MacMillan was staring up at the massive creature, ten feet tall and twice as large around, a mess of vine-like limbs concealing a centre that may not even be there. It reached out to the ceiling with its coiling, crooked limbs, and towards the walls, and scraped restlessly along the floor. On MacMillan’s face was a helpless, open expression, his brow furrowed and eyes nearly glassy.

Dwight followed MacMillan from a cautious distance, torn between wanting to run to his side and wanting to stay as far away from the creature as possible. His gaze ping-ponged between the two of them like a deer that couldn’t take its eyes off of a predatory wolf.

“I _always_ do as asked,” MacMillan continued, and Dwight realized he was watching a conversation of which he could only hear one side. “No. I… I _promise_. I swear it _.”_

Dwight watched as MacMillan patted his chest emphatically, his fingers curled awkwardly and limp as he stared hopelessly up. He was staring at what to Dwight appeared to be an empty space, a vision known only to MacMillan, whose gaze was like obsidian glass, and distant.

“Please. I won’t…” MacMillan whispered, voice stuttering. “How much…longer?”

**_Incredible, isn’t he?_ **

Dwight heard a voice come from behind his ear and froze stiff, afraid to turn and see from where it came, until he realized it was from his own head. It was the hideous voice of the Entity.

**_Look at you. Look at you stand tall when all you want to do is tremble._ **

Dwight was too terrified to respond. He felt a shiver, deep beneath his skin, like it was creeping along his very bones. He took a shuddering breath in. He needed to big himself up, needed to know he could make it through this. And there was no one better at convincing people to stand up when they wanted to curl in and hide than he.

_Come on._ He breathed out through his mouth. _Come on. Keep it together._

“W-what are you?” Dwight asked, “why are you doing this to us?"

The voice laughed. Long, deep, heavy. It splashed inside of his head like paint.

**_You’re_ ** **so _close. You were_ so close _, weren’t you? It must tear you up._**

Dwight shook his head. He didn’t understand the meaning of the words, couldn’t focus. He only knew how the syrupy speech made him _feel_ : a stinging, burning resentment simmered in his chest, like the coals of the lonely campfire, crackling and singeing. He felt like tears could come to his eyes, but they were dry, as was his throat as it contracted around swallow after swallow.

The voice was everywhere and nowhere, ambient, echoing lowly like grinding stone. It rose up from the floor—the sullen, cracked clay, scoffing under Dwight’s feet as he wrestled between approaching the Entity and backing away. He lowered his head, and felt his hand lifting towards his mouth.

**_Watched them all slip away and leave you behind. How pathetic are you? They didn’t want to take you with them. They wouldn’t wait for you. They thought you were gone._ ** **Hoped _you were gone._**

Dwight shook his head. Squeezing his eyes shut did nothing to block out the sound of the creature’s voice, echoing inside his head, rooted in deep, like a seed, germinating on his brainstem, taking him over from the inside. He felt sick in his stomach. He pressed his fingers to his mouth.

**_And now look at you. Shacked-up with the monster that killed you over and over. How little self-respect do you have?_ **

“Stop it,” Dwight said back, under his breath, and then more loudly, “stop!”

The voice laughed again. Gleefully happy, low and sinister. It reminded Dwight of the Doctor and that joyful, lustful laugh that was in his voice as Evan was beating him into the floor.

**_He killed you. Rent your innards with his cleaver. Crushed your bones. Chased you until you sobbed with fright. Broke you._** The voice was a low, dull roar, like it came from miles away. Dwight’s wide eyes tried to chase it around the room, seeing nothing in the blur of his tears but the pulse of red in the pitch-black, the squirming, skulking mass of the creature, its arms reaching, exultant to the ceiling.

**_And now you let him lay his hands on you._ **

Dwight’s eyes widened, until they were owlish with horror, a pang shooting through his chest, threatening to bring him to his knees.

**_Look at him._** Dwight felt his gaze guide over to MacMillan, like a hand was on his chin forcing him to abide. He saw the trembling back, the arms pocked with scars, the skin sun-worn and grey.

**_You’re wondering why I keep him._ **

****

**_He has so much more to give._ **

****

Dwight wanted to fall to his knees, curl up, hide. He saw the nightmare of the trial, felt the pounding fear, the inevitability. But there was another eye through which he saw it, now. He saw through the kil—through MacMillan’s eye, the tunnel-vision, the seething red. He heard the insistent, needling cries, thrusting him forward. Ordering him to shed blood. Dwight’s visions tangled, swirled. He felt a sob in his chest.

**_You really believe it, don’t you? You really expect, somewhere, deep inside you, that you’ll get out of here. That the two of you will live, free and peaceful, away from here._ **

****

The Entity spoke with calm and surety while Dwight’s heart pounded. He looked up at the simmering pile of limb and spirit.

****

**_It has to end sometime. It can’t go on forever. That’s what you expect, isn’t it? You still have faith._ **

Dwight took in a shuddering breath and let it out. He wanted to protest, wanted to fight back, but he couldn’t even lift his hands from his ears where he pressed them, desperately trying to block out the sound, to no avail. The voice offered a final word, its force like a knell of a massive bell.

**_Good._ **

It continued to taunt, to decry, peeling at Dwight layer by layer. Dwight felt used up, yet desperate. He felt as though he could stoop over and just let the Entity have him, here and now, and be done with it. What else was there to do? He was lost in this purgatorial wasteland, he was alone, he was without shape or substance, a ghost. There was nothing… no one…

No. No, no, no.

The word echoed in his own heart, over and over until he pried his hands from his ears and realized that the sound was coming from somewhere outside of him. Evan was frozen across the room, trudging like a marionette towards the creature in the centre of it. It was like he was in a trance, like a poisoned ant marching to its doom. A psychedelic haze obscured Dwight’s eyes before he blinked away tears and saw Evan, all hulking shoulders and uncomplicated strength and inner pain, skulking away from him.

The Entity’s voice cleared from his mind just as abruptly as it had arrived to be replaced with Dwight’s own inner voice, propelling him forward.

_Not like this. Can’t lose him. Doesn’t deserve it_ , the voice said, choppily, as Dwight glimpsed the reality of Evan slipping away from him, disappearing back into the Entity’s hideous, permanent employ, a doll, and instrument, kept away from his free will.

The thought made him sick to his stomach. Dwight shook his head, stumbling forward as the Entity pulled back at him, trying to hook into him with its vile talons. But he would not let it.

While he plodded forwards, every step a galactic feat, his vision filled with MacMillan. He saw MacMillan patiently bandaging his leg even while Dwight kicked and swung for his chin. He saw the hulk of a man striding in front of him while they trekked through the recursive forest, looking over his shoulder to see that Dwight was still behind him, his glance belying a small trace of relief. He saw MacMillan crouched by the stove, pretending to poke at the diminishing fuel while secretly watching Dwight instead, his gaze fervent and heavy and…holding so much. So much more than…what he was forced, compelled into being.

“E—Evan,” Dwight stuttered out, his voice like wind through grass, airy and broken.

Evan’s face was tipped to the ceiling, his eyes wide. A tear rolled down his cheek, crossing the scar that split his sallow cheek and lip. The Entity reached a clawed finger towards his chin. Another sought to wrap around his middle; another prodded at his breast.

“Evan, please, look at me,” Dwight said, unsure whether he was even saying it aloud, the voices inside him were so numerous now, and cacophonous, sounding in unison. They spoke in the voices of his friends: his real, fire-forged friends. Jake, telling him to never give up on what he cared about, no matter what anyone else said. Claudette, telling him to believe in himself. Meg shoving him at the fireside before curling up on his arm, in her wordless smile speaking clarity. An injured David smacking him on the back and singing his praises to a doubtful crowd. Nea calling him “boss” and making his heart swell. Among them there was the Entity, pushing at the back of his mind, intruding, trying to barge in.

Every step was leaden, but Dwight finally made it near enough to grab Evan by the arm and pull at him with all of his might. Of course he didn’t budge, rooted to the spot as if planted in soil, in a grave. He pulled and strained until he felt nauseous but he was like a brick wall. Dwight sobbed with the effort, digging his nails into Evan’s skin, to no effect. He finally put himself between the man and the Entity.

“Evan, please, look at me. We need to leave. You don’t have to stay here,” he grabbed at Evan’s wrist, shoulder, waist. “You don’t have to listen to it.”

He reached up and grabbed Evan by the face, wrapping his fingers around Evan’s cheeks. Finally, the man stirred, to tilt his head ever so slightly in the direction of the disruption. He looked down at Dwight, expression empty and wooden.

And then, as their eyes met, his widened, and the colour returned to them, to his face, to his skin. Slowly realization shifted over him, and he reached out for Dwight, cradling his face in two huge, weathered, but so, so gentle hands.

“I…” he spoke as if saying his first words. “I…”

Dwight stared at him, pleading with his eyes until Evan seemed to jolt awake, and then his expression turned fierce.

“We need to leave,” Evan said, pulling Dwight against him, out of the reach of the Entity’s prying arms. It recoiled, surprised, its voice a pleased yet irritated hum in the back of Dwight’s mind. He curled into Evan for a moment, breathing hard against his scarred chest, hearing the thud of his heartbeat beneath his cheek, then peeled away, taking him by the hand.

“Come on,” Dwight whispered. He felt shaky on his feet. Woozy. He didn’t know if it was just emotion, or some insidious, torpid poison spat out by the Entity. The thing continued to undulate, carelessly throwing its limbs this way and that, making no actual attempt to keep them there—it didn’t operate through physical violence, anyway. Manipulation was what it preferred, drawing others to do its bidding. And it had almost drawn Evan in again.

Dwight was almost afraid to leave the basement and go back into that bone-dry, pitch-black landscape, but he wasn’t about to spend another second in the creature’s looming company. They took the stairs two at a time, Dwight lagging behind by the fault of his shorter stride, Evan dragging him by the hand every step of the way. They emerged from the hole in the ground and into a shady forest, a section of the winding wood, Dwight knew by the smell, the low air, the lively chill among the trees, and he let out a breath he was holding.

They kept fleeing, through tracts of wood, following their noses and their instincts, until the faint light became more vibrant, and they drew nearer to familiar ground. They rushed, their mismatched gaits impacting cold, clay-thickened soil, windless air silent against their faces. They ran until the found themselves very alone, the Entity’s voice only a strange memory, a faint buzz of fireflies the only sound in the dark of the forest. A full moon shone overhead through the bushy limbs of an evergreen, and they sheltered in its shadow.

Dwight put his hands on his knees, bending over and feeling as though he could vomit, but nothing came up. He didn’t know when was the last time he’d eaten, or if he even _could_ eat… but still there was a dragging, pulling feeling in his gut trying to turn him inside out. Just a moment’s exposure to the Entity’s enormity, its violation, and he was drained, hollowed out. MacMillan, on the other hand, heard it _always_ in the trials, for countless nights, it whispering to him, compelling him forth…how on this godforsaken not-Earth had he kept his mind intact?

“What did it say to you?” Dwight panted out. MacMillan was leaning against the tree, his head lifted to the starry sky, his eyes closed as he leveled his breathing. His limbs looked heavy, as if he was being pulled into the ground. Yet there was a lightness to his aura, as though some sort of realization, and relief, was upon him.

“It… it tells us what we want to hear,” MacMillan whispered, “it knows precisely what’s in our heads, what we wish for…and it promises those things to us. Promises, though. Only promises. What it pledges it will never actually provide.”

Dwight was afraid to enquire further. He thought about what he’d said to Evan earlier about telling people what he needed them to hear. Was this the way Dwight would discover _he_ was no better than the villain of this story?

“Before, it was to get away from my father. I wanted to be rid of him; I wished for a world in which he’d never existed and I was never his son. But this time…”

MacMillan took a deep breath. He opened his arms, asking Dwight to come towards him, but not forcing him. Dwight went easily, resting against Evan’s chest.

He didn’t say what it was the Entity had promised him, but Dwight didn’t need to know. There was something heavy between them, more than a bond forged in fire, or by necessity. Dwight wasn’t sure he could handle the weight of it, the scope. He sighed deeply as he felt Evan’s arms come around him, holding him close. Dwight hugged back, his arms barely reaching around the breadth of Evan’s middle, fingertips pressing into the knotted flesh between his shoulders.

Evan held him for a long time—fiercely long, in fact, until their legs gave out, and they had to sit against a broad oak’s trunk, moonlight touching down over them like ribbons, still and smooth on their skin. They curled together, Dwight sitting on Evan’s leg, reaching up to simply look at his face. He lifted his fingers to explore the hard features, the bold jut of jawbone, the severe line of the mouth, the angle of cheekbones. On Evan’s face was a look of relief mixed with anxiety, swirling together, both coming to the surface at once in a deep sigh. His chest lifted as he brought in air through his nose and let it out in a whoosh, his eyes trained on Dwight’s.

Then he leaned forward, putting his lips on Dwight’s cheek, inviting him to come to his mouth with a slight turn of the chin. Dwight reciprocated, putting his lips against Evan’s, to be swept into a passionate kiss. Evan’s hands came behind his shoulders and drew him bodily close, a tongue surged into his mouth and Dwight felt his knees go weak, expecting they would jellify under him if he were standing. He returned the kiss with as much fervour as he could manage, but it was nothing compared to the hunger with which Evan embraced him, holding him so close he could feel his body crushed against the steel of Evan’s chest, kissing him so deeply he ceased to remember how to breathe.

They separated only when they were fully sated of each other’s taste and substance, pulling apart only to embrace again, Dwight resting his head on Evan’s shoulder and Evan hugging him close, leaning back to take on more of Dwight’s weight, to cradle him. Dwight felt a big hand on his back, stroking up and down, and heard a whisper in his ear as he melted into the embrace.

“Thank you,” Evan said, so gently Dwight’s heart gave a twinge to hear it, “thank you.”


	12. Heat and water

Dwight rushed along after MacMillan, his own not-insignificant strides completely dwarfed by MacMillan’s stupidly long legs eating up the ground.

The man’s enthusiasm was multiplied lately, Dwight realized, like a big weight had been lifted from his back and he could now move freely. Shedding the Entity’s cloying limbs unscathed put a fair amount of confidence in both of them, though Dwight was still cautious to be optimistic. They were still _stuck_ here, after all, but at least it was in the understanding that they were neither of them alone. Each could count on the other to pull him out of danger.

MacMillan had suddenly insisted that they head out of the cabin, shaking Dwight awake after he’d fallen asleep against his arm. Dwight awoke quickly and followed hurriedly as they went through the wood again, down a path scarcely-trod but distinguishable, apparently, from the surrounding vegetation, by MacMillan’s keen eyes.

“You gonna tell me where we’re going, or is it just gonna be awkward silence the whole way?” Dwight asked, rubbing the sleep from his cheek. That creek water would be mighty refreshing at the moment, even ice-cold as it was.

“Awkward silence,” MacMillan replied, and as he looked back over his shoulder, Dwight caught a glimpse of a grin. That proud smirk on the younger Evan in the photo he’d seen was living well inside the older’s gaunt cheek.

They emerged shortly from the unfamiliar wood and came upon a large, square tract of land, its outer borders once again lost to the distant fog. In the middle was a large estate, Victorian in design and age, the walls crumbling here and there, the roof absent in spots, but still stately and intricate. Dwight tilted his head, curiously taking in the details from a distance.

“Another disused area?” Dwight asked, and MacMillan nodded.

“Indeed. Come and see what is inside.”

They strode across the yard, up the hill to the dilapidated old villa, going in through an absent front door, through the foyer to a large, open room with stairs leading up to a second-floor landing with an opulent rail. The house was in good shape, though patched together, like most of the Entity’s creations, with too much crumbling furniture in one room, and an uncommon kind of wallpaper in another, creating a mismatched effect.

They came to a stately bathroom, with a huge, brass-footed bathtub in the centre, a toilet and pedestal sink over shiny, white tile cracked here and there. The walls were in neat eggshell tile turned copper brown with disrepair, and the ceiling above bore a skylight, though it was rather redundant next to the gaping hole in the roof adjacent to it. Still, the room was well-intact, and Dwight looked around while MacMillan hovered excitedly before him, watching his reaction.

“Pretty nice; maybe a bit of a fixer-upper,” Dwight commented, though he was slightly unsure what he was doing here. He’d seen bathtubs in Lery’s, after all, and although they were usually crawling with rats, he got the gist. MacMillan hurried over to the tub and reached for the faucet.

“Yes, but watch this,” MacMillan said, and turned the knob. Water sluiced out of the tap, shortly turning from a slow trickle to a full-flowing, steaming stream.

Dwight’s eyes widened. “Is that…?”

MacMillan nodded.

Dwight rushed over to see for himself. Warm, flowing water, in the forest? And without any black ooze, putrid serum, or clumps of rat fur mixed in? Did this mean a warm bath in what felt like ages? Without the balm of the campfire, which seemed to renew them as much as it healed, Dwight had had no chance to refresh himself in _so_ long. He suddenly felt sorer, stickier and dirtier than before, just watching the clean water fill the large tub. He ran a hand through the water, sweeping his fingertips across the smooth ceramic bottom through the warm ripples that curled about his hand. The sound of pouring water echoed in the bathroom as the two men stared at it like cats enthralled by a bit of wriggling string.

When the water was nearly full, MacMillan turned the faucet off and they were left in silence, save for the sound of distant grasshoppers in the lawn outside. It seemed a fitting accompaniment to the awkward silence, which, Dwight realized, was only awkward because they were waiting in it.

“Do you want to go in?” MacMillan asked, and Dwight nodded enthusiastically.

“Of course, yes,” he said, cautiously taking off his hoody. MacMillan also pulled out of his shirt, arms rising over his head and tossing the garment broadly aside.

Dwight looked. MacMillan was thick with muscle and some extra weight that came with age, giving him massive arms, a wide, barrel-chest, and slightly protruding belly. Scars were thick and deep across his torso and arm, though the ones that were vestiges of the spikes pulled from his flesh were now white and nearly flat.

It shouldn’t be any big deal. He’d seen MacMillan shirtless before; in fact, it was more rare to see him as he was lately, draped in a stately button-up he’d produced from who-knows-where. And besides, there was no reason that this occasion couldn’t hold to the same spirit of camaraderie that saw men bathing together throughout history, like they did in the military, or out camping, or in locker rooms after tiring sports matches—or at least, like they did in _movies_. Dwight hadn’t exactly had the opportunity for those sort of male-bonding activities in his real life.

Dwight swallowed thickly and took off his t-shirt and jeans as well, standing awkwardly in his boxers and socks and rubbing his arm, finding it suddenly, remarkably too cold in the musty, ancient villa.

He looked up just as MacMillan popped the button of his slacks and they dropped to the floor with a dramatic _thump_. MacMillan stepped out of them to reveal his entirely nude body, with scars continuing all the way down his torso, and even a few bruises on the front of his thighs surrounding his…er, cleaver. Dwight tried not to stare but it was hard not to notice how thick it was, and out in the open in a display of self-confidence Dwight could only dream of. He swallowed again, lump growing just at the back of his mouth as he tried looking at the water.

Taking turns was the obvious solution to avoid this awkwardness, but suggesting it felt distinctly rude, and cowardly, for some reason, so Dwight simply, with shaky hand, stripped off his remaining garments and hopped into the water quickly to hide his modesty beneath a distorting film of clear, steamy water. He regretted going so hastily almost immediately, as the water was too hot to accustom quickly, and he winced as he sunk down and sat hunched, knees bent and with his hands between his legs.

MacMillan climbed in at the other end of the tub, facing him, and Dwight pointedly looked away from the way his manhood swung boldly between his legs as he stepped in and settled in the water.

It was a tight fit, almost comically so, Dwight thought with a lurch, he with his knees up at one end and MacMillan barely sinking below the waist in the water, which now rose nearly to the edge of the tub with the displacement of their bodies. Awkward, yes, but not yet intimate—so long as he continued to squint.

The more he tried to talk it out in his mind, the more he had to contend that what was between he and MacMillan was…very much different than the spirit of a men’s locker room.

Dwight curled up, wrapping his arms around his knees and pulling them in. He had been…avoiding this, this thing that felt inevitable. There was _that sort_ of attraction, from his side, and if the way that…Evan was currently observing him was indication, it went the other way as well. Dwight had tried to ignore it when he saw that MacMillan was watching him rest up on the bed, or when a hand found its way to his waist when they embraced, rather than the safer position on his back or shoulder. He peered at Evan through foggy lenses, hoping that the heat from the water would work as a reasonable excuse for his flushing face.

A big hand reached through the water and for his knee, stroking the cold skin. Dwight looked at MacMillan for only a second before tearing his gaze away and blushing madly.

“Dwight,” MacMillan said softly, and Dwight realized that it was the first time he’d heard his name spoken in ages. He shivered with the touch of cool air hitting his wet skin. “You can turn around and lean back against me. That way you don’t have to see me.”

Dwight flushed even harder, this time out of embarrassment for offending Evan. He shook his head. The man’s body, stripped of metal trappings, the frightening mask, and any adornments of violence, was perfectly attractive. The scars that marred the flesh didn’t bother Dwight in the slightest, and in fact he felt tightness in his stomach thinking about having those wide forearms and thick thighs wrapped around him.

He shook his head with exasperation. “No, for god’s sake, Evan, it’s not that.”

“It’s okay,” Evan—because that’s who he was, stripped of any of the vestiges of his cruel masters: his father and the Entity; he was just a man who had suffered and been tortured and who still, for some reason, held warmth and gentleness in his big hands—whispered, gesturing that Dwight turn around and put his back against him.

Shakily, Dwight agreed and turned around, inelegantly turning about in the water, and with Evan’s help, settling back against him, between his legs, against his belly. Evan stretched his legs out long and slid down just a bit further beneath the water, leaning back against the smooth ceramic slope of the tub, and Dwight followed, lying back so that his head was on Evan’s collarbone, and his back against Evan’s stomach. At the small of his back, Evan’s flaccid member pressed, and Dwight was grateful now that he could blush in privacy.

“Sorry for being so awkward,” Dwight said, resting his hands across his waist, over Evan’s, which were circled around him there.

“It’s fine. You’re nothing but charming,” Evan assured, his voice near Dwight’s ear.

Dwight frowned. “Yeah, right. What’s more charming: my boring personality or my pale, flabby body?”

Evan exhaled through his nose, a soft puff of air tickling Dwight’s ear. “Your brown eyes, your furrowed brow…I can see you so clearly when I close my eyes.” He stroked a thumb across Dwight’s belly, the soft touch making Dwight flush for a whole bunch of different reasons.

“I liked it better when you weren’t talking,” Dwight whispered, tightening his arms around himself. Evan chuckled.

It was a lie, of course. He was enthralled by Evan's every word in his ears, even as each compliment turned his skin crimson.

Most of Dwight’s body below the chest was under the surface, now, and the feeling of the warm water surrounding him was comforting beyond measure. As much as he didn’t need to eat, drink or sleep in this realm, he missed the feeling of it: the enjoyment of sipping a fresh cup of coffee in the morning, the satisfaction of eating a warm, hearty meal, and even the groggy, peculiar feeling of waking from a five-minute nap that ended up lasting two hours. This realm provided him only what _it_ needed to feed upon: camaraderie, loneliness, and the susceptibility for pain. There were other feelings, left, too, that the Entity could not torture out of him, it appeared, as he felt himself growing warmer and warmer in Evan’s large, welcoming arms.

“So what happens now?” Dwight mused, tipping his head back against Evan’s shoulder, knowing well that there was no good answer. “We wait for a new batch of unlucky bastards to get trapped in here with us, start the whole thing over again?”

Evan made a sound of dismissal, and Dwight felt something hot pressing against his neck. He realized that it was lips, and his heartbeat skyrocketed. He hadn’t been kissed there in…far too long, and on the most sensitive line of his neck, beneath his ear, he could feel every bit of the warm lips grazing his skin, disrupted by a slightly rough scar through the middle. He took a deep breath and dug his fingers into Evan’s arm that crossed his waist.

“What if we could get out?” Dwight pondered, trying to do everything he could to avoid discussing what was currently happening between them. Talking about it would make it just too real, and he’d have to think about the fact that his heart was racing at the thought of being held by the man who had enacted so much mindless violence against him. He didn’t _mean_ to, he was compelled into it, Dwight insisted desperately inside his head, eyelids fluttering. “W-where would we go, you think?”

Would they be returned to their old lives, their own times? Or spat randomly onto an earth that had forgotten them? Or sent to a fate yet worse than this one? His mind raced with possibilities, his heart along with it.

Evan didn’t respond but to grunt in reply, his breathing growing ragged behind Dwight’s head. He kissed along Dwight’s ear and jaw, chasing his lips as Dwight turned timidly away. With a thick palm he rubbed Dwight’s knee beneath the water, gliding up and up with each slow movement.

“Would we…go back to our lives? Or is there something…s-something… _mm_ ,” Dwight let out a moan, unable to hide his reaction when Evan’s hand found his thigh and tucked into the sensitive nerve up the inner seam with his thumb. Dwight bit down on his lip, shutting his eyes. The steam fogged his glasses, anyway, and the lack of sight made everything closer, more visceral. He gripped Evan’s leg, his fingers impacting what was like iron in its hardness, yet the skin was still smooth over the muscles of his thigh.

“I don’t know,” Evan whispered hungrily into his ear, “I don’t care about it.”

“Evan,” Dwight breathed, shaking his head. “Yes you do. You have to believe there’s some way to…there’s gotta be _something_.”

Dwight’s heart was racing. He was talking just to survive again. It was easier than admitting to what was really going on here. He was stuck forever in an empty, wild purgatory, with a man who wanted him just the way he was.

“You don’t even…we’re the last people left on earth. We’re just…” _Desperate_ was the word Dwight declined to say, his heart racing and electricity thrumming under his fingertips. They were worlds, _eras_ apart, joined only by mutual loneliness. How could he…how could they…?

“You want me to _explain_ to you _why_ I’m charmed by you?” Evan hissed into his neck, this time with a bit of impatience. He took Dwight’s hand, lifting it from the water and pulling it back to his lips, spreading them over his wrist, which was dwarfed in comparison to his own. Dwight blushed and put his other hand over his face, letting out a soft whimper.

“You wish no ill on anyone. You are kind, open-hearted, generous,” Evan explained, taking Dwight’s hand and putting it against his own cheek, so when he spoke, the muscles of his jaw moved beneath Dwight’s palm. “Look what you’ve done for me. You, who should’ve hated me, should’ve shunned me, you _healed_ me. How could you be so brave?”

“Evan, I’m not…” Dwight insisted, argument unformed and sloppy in his mouth. All he knew was that this was…scary, like falling backwards and hoping someone would catch you. This was desperation, running away from their fears of torture and solitude. Of obsoleteness. Attraction— _affection_ was just the side-effect of prolonged exposure. How could anyone want to… _hold him_ so much?

“You’re so _soft_ ,” Evan whispered, “suffering has made me rough, can you feel?” He pressed Dwight’s palm against his cheek, into the sandpaper-hard texture of his chin, the hardness of the bone of his mandible, the hollow of his cheek, “yet not you. You remain tender, gentle.

“I don’t know any other way to tell you,” Evan said, and slipped his hand between Dwight’s legs. Dwight gasped and clutched his wrist.

“Wait,” Dwight pleaded, and the advance stopped immediately. Flushing red from his brow to the tip of his nose, he turned back to face Evan, and found himself caught in a lustful, heady, dark-grey gaze.

He bit his lip.

“Home,” Dwight requested, and Evan froze a moment before nodding his acquiescence.


	13. Fundament

They climbed out of the bath, the sound of sloshing water echoing loudly in the strange, old room. Evan fetched a pair of towels from the rack adjacent, and though they were moth-bitten and aged, they did the trick. Evan draped the towel about Dwight’s shoulders, drawing him over with a pull on both ends of the cloth, pinching his chin to look into his face. What he was looking for, Dwight didn’t know, but expected it was his comfort, and his consent.

Dwight was willing, shaky as he was, unused to the affection and under-experienced. He was _extremely_ willing, if the tingle that shot all the way down to his toes just from Evan’s touch against his cheek was any indication. He dried himself off, catching the occasional glimpse of Evan’s arousal, reflected in his tense arms, his hard, focused expression, and of course, that thing between his legs, which now pointed half-hard towards his thigh. Dwight didn’t feel inadequate, but rather fearful. There would be no going back from this: when Dwight’s partners fell hard for him—and they did, and he knew it—instead of giving in to his vulnerability, ever he lied and slinked away.

He had a feeling it would be harder this time.

They looked around the house, but every room was in shambles save the one they just left, and besides, Dwight wanted this to happen in the safety of the cabin, in the space they’d built up together. They put on their clothes, Dwight after a few long, deep breaths to collect himself, and then journeyed back to the cabin. Evan’s hand was tucked in his own as he led the way, mighty fingers gripping his slim, trembling ones. They returned to the cabin and Evan lifted Dwight over the threshold, an alternate version of how the Trapper had dragged him back in just a while ago to tend his injuries with his blundering bedside manner.

Evan placed Dwight on the bed after kicking the door shut behind him, even as the very empty woods offered no threat to their peace, no chance of interruption. He climbed above Dwight on hands and knees, pushing back his legs to bring their bodies together, until they were pressed front to front. He pulled Dwight out of his t-shirt and bent his head to attend his chest, placing kisses on his sternum. Dwight watched shyly as Evan moved his attention to a nipple, sucking the small, red bud between his lips.

Dwight pressed his palm low on Evan’s stomach, communicating with his hands rather than his words. His superpower was failing him, he was already so dismantled by their intimacy. He made a gesture with his chin and then reached for the first button of his shirt, which was rather far down his chest—their haste in redressing after the bath had resulted in only a portion of the buttons actually getting done. Evan got the message right away, slipping out of his clothes and discarding them, with his boots, beside the bed. Dwight looked intently at his face as he wriggled out of his own slacks and shoes.

When they were both exposed, Dwight wrapped his arms around Evan’s back, and they simply reveled in the feel of skin-on-skin warmth. This was someone who had seen him practically inside out, his guts hanging from his belly, blood pouring down his legs, humiliation and terror forcing him forward as he tried to outrun a swinging cleaver. There was a level of intimacy to _that_ sort of relationship that Dwight didn’t want to acknowledge. He didn’t want to conflate violence with what they were doing now, but there _was_ a similarity—a bareness, a vulnerability…

Dwight slid his hands down Evan’s waist, down to the small of his back, pressing firmly with his fingers into the aching flesh. Evan made a small grunt of interest and bowed his spine, bringing his hardness firmly against Dwight’s thigh. Dwight gripped his rear and pushed down with his fingertips, squeezing them closer together.

Fingers stroked his inner thigh, and then there was some shuffling to retrieve healing salve from a medkit stored under the bed. Dwight took a deep breath, hiding his insecurity in his arm. Evan searched the hot space between his thighs with his fingers. Dwight opened his legs, sliding his heels down the scavenged blankets, letting his knees fall wide around Evan’s hips.

It would be a lie to say there was no pain when Evan slid inside him, but it was a strong, throbbing ache, no injury. Dwight took a deep breath and let it out, asking Evan to pause a few times as he worked his way inside, which the man obliged without question. By the time he was finally, completely inside, and setting a firm, steady pace, pumping between his open thighs, Dwight was nearly floating off of the bed in a stupor.

The pleasure-pressure-pain combo was thrilling, and Evan’s persistent lust, his single-minded attention was intoxicating. Dwight let his head fall back against the pile of pillows, jaw slack, lips parting. When Evan’s touch drew deeper, until it was pressing into that button inside of him that made his toes curl, Dwight let out a moan, and didn’t stop moaning until it was an unbroken series of effortless sounds floating from his mouth.

He groaned and gasped and whimpered freely, knowing there was no one around to hear his sounds. He dug his fingers into Evan’s back, gripping him fiercely, and Evan responded by wrapping him up in a tight embrace. As they reached climax, he heard Evan whispering sweetly into his ear, and Dwight saw stars just then, crying out to the ceiling, body going tight and then falling loose and limp, melting into Evan’s arms.

Boneless they lay, then, Dwight flat on his back and Evan still between his legs, plying his naked body with kisses, from the centre of his belly, up to his neck, throat, and across the bridge of his collarbones. He whispered into Dwight’s chest, chin just over his heart, “don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” in a tone so sweetly desperate it made Dwight need to shut his eyes to keep from crying.

They rested side-by-side, then, sweat cooling on their bodies. There was no going back, indeed. Next, would come their interdependence, hours spent stressing about whether he was liked in return, and a nagging fear of betrayal that always stuck around. Dwight considered himself pretty well-adjusted, relationship-wise, but…just how was he supposed to adjust to this? This was the man who killed him over and over again as part of some sick game. Part of Dwight almost wanted Evan to be rougher—to rip him open, to make him cry, so he could imagine he was just in some nightmare beyond his control.

But Evan was exceedingly gentle, handling him slowly—pushing him, yes, past his comfort zone, not allowing him excuses, expecting more from him than startled submission, but all with kindness and patience.

This—and what he now had to do—was a different kind of nightmare.

Dwight wrapped his arms around himself. He turned to see Evan laying on his belly, snoring softly, his face relaxed like Dwight had never seen it. His sallow cheeks even seemed to have a bit of spring in them, his hairless brow was smooth, and even his scar looked soft. Dwight reached out and brushed a thumb across Evan’s chin, finding the hulk of a man did not stir at all.

Despite his lover’s unconscious protestations, Dwight got up and made to leave. He put on layers of clothing, bundling himself tight. He crept out of the cabin in silence, making for the crossroads in the woods.

As he tread the forest alone, every sound perturbed him, even when he realized that there were none save those that he made. No insects, no wind, no whistling birds… He’d gone so long without hearing them he only noticed their absence when he listened very closely. Such was the case with many things. He thought about the warmth of Evan’s thick arms wrapped around him, his body pressed into the width of a stone-hard chest. He wasn’t like marble, no, not so fragile—he was stone, granite, hard and aged but aglow with life. Dwight shivered as he trudged alone through the wood.

When he was sufficiently far from home—because that’s what it was, such as any; it was a place they made for themselves, that they could trick themselves, when inside its comely walls, was only for them—he reached into the pocket of his jacket. Inside was a leaflet of Baker’s journal, torn from the very end of the book. He read, though he had over and over before.

_Hope’s the thing. Ken didn’t have it. I’d seen it in his eyes for a long time. And that’s why it let him go free. Hope’s the thing that keeps us tethered to this awful place._

Dwight closed the book. He swallowed down tears.

Back at the cabin, Evan was awake, dressed save a shirt or shoes, and stood outside the door, peering into the foggy wood. Dwight strode up and smiled broadly at him, hoping there was no lingering sadness in his face.

His superpower would have to come in handy one more time.

Evan reached out to him, as if to run a hand through his hair, or over his cheek, but Dwight ducked away, as if suddenly distracted by something pressing in the far corner of the room. He stood by the back window, overlooking the empty fog, the creek that settled behind the forge, the greyness like a blank slate of shale. Evan followed him, and Dwight steeled himself one last time.

He remembered the way Quentin had cried during his first trial: just settled in the long grass, holding his knees about him, and sobbed. Dwight had snapped him back to attention, and none-too-gently: _this is how it is, now. This is how it has to be. Get up and do your work._ He’d been heartless, honestly, but it was how he survived. He remembered the time that Kate and David were arguing over strategy and Dwight knocked them down with a firm rebuttal—no mediation, only dictation: _focus on the task at hand_. The one and only time Jake had come to him for emotional counsel, Dwight had simply directed him along to more pressing matters: planning strategy, practicing first aid.

He had regrets, sure. But all of those interactions, truncated, cold-hearted—had taught him something.

MacMillan’s big, warm hand landed on his shoulder, and Dwight pulled away, turning on his heel. MacMillan looked puzzled, no doubt he would, and tilted his head as he considered the man in between whose thighs he was just shortly before.

“I say we head back to the Estate,” Dwight said, “you said that’s where you first saw the light—I mean, not figuratively, but literally. Maybe we can still get out of here.”

“You’ve changed your mind,” Evan asked, but it was more like an observation, made at the distance Dwight was putting between them. “You want out.”

“I never _stopped_ wanting out,” Dwight explained, “it just seemed to stop being an option. But I have a feeling, now. It could work.”

Evan raised an eyebrow, and this time reached boldly for Dwight’s chin. He snatched it in one beefy hand, tugging Dwight’s attention to him. Dwight kept his gaze downturned.

“Listen,” Dwight whispered, “I hope you weren’t expecting…anything.”

Evan frowned. “Why would I?” He was examining Dwight’s face in great detail, until finally he pulled away, stepping back into the windowsill, leaning upon it. “I was only _inside you_ moments ago.”

Dwight felt his stomach lurch and he blushed. Part of him wanted badly to just fall into Evan’s arms again. It was easy, in the moment, to relish the physical and put all else aside. And with Evan moving smoothly between his thighs he could almost forget about the murder and suffering the beast of a man had put him through. Was that what he was thinking of, now? Or something equally misery-inducing?

The sad turn of his face certainly seemed to say so. Dwight could hardly look. But he had to. This had to be real, believable.

“It didn’t mean anything, Evan,” Dwight explained, exasperated, “come on. You knew that. We’re incompatible. We’re literally the last men left on earth and have nothing else to lose.”

“Why are you distancing yourself from this?” Evan asked, shaking his head, “as though you weren’t the one to start it.”

Dwight remembered that moment, what seemed to be eons ago, leaning against the Trapper who was then like his curmudgeonly jail warden, and soothing him into complacency. At that time, was he being helpful, or manipulative? Selfish, or selfless? What about now?

“ _You_ were the one who brought me here,” Dwight countered, “out of convenience, clearly. Two-dozen poor bastards to choose from and you settle on _me_? I was weak, injured, and you just reached out and grabbed whatever was closest to your grubby hands.”

“ _No,_ ” Evan answered firmly, stepping close. Dwight took a step away. “No.”

Dwight strode towards the bed, drawing from a small toolkit his watch, Jake’s letter, the sketchbook and a few other pocket-sized mementos of the journey. “Anyway, we need to go back to the Estate. I think we can get out if we just try again.” He sorted through a few offerings they would throw into the fire before a trial, superstitions, begging for good luck: a linen packet stuffed with fragrant herbs Claudette could name just by smell; a bundle of weeds and sticks tied with twine, and an old artifact of a past life. Half the time, he didn’t even know if they worked or were just placebos. There was, after all, one more secret ingredient, too, Dwight realized, that they needed.

“What is it that you want me to say?” MacMillan asked, crowding close, the way he had to block Dwight’s exit when he was still injured. “‘I’m sorry’? I’m sorry for being forced to chase you and your—your friends? I’m sorry for stealing you away from them? You should know just by looking into my eyes that I regret it, dearly. You _know_ I do.”

Dwight shook his head. “It’s not about that. It’s about _this_.” He indicated the space between them, which was growing broader by the moment. “We were pawns in a game, just… _thrown_ together. We’d never actually _fit_ together.”

Evan reached out and snatched his arm, drawing him close and speaking in a voice low and severe. “We seemed to fit together just fine with I _between your thighs_.”

Dwight shivered, but kept his expression impassive. “Let go of me.”

Evan obeyed, raising his hands in surrender. He seemed a mix of angry and hurt, which was, well, the goal. This had to be severe, had to _sting_ , and the pain had to turn hard, like concrete, solid, and impassible. It had to encase everything else.

Dwight took one last look around the cabin. He didn’t even know if what he was bringing with him would remain, or where he would even end up after this. He felt distinctly hopeless, like he was jumping willingly into a cold abyss, or a wormhole that led nowhere. In the best-case scenario, he’d die and go to Heaven, and Heaven would look like the covers of those nonsense pamphlets they handed out on street corners, with everyone wearing modest clothing and chilling out in the endless sunny gardens of Paradise. Worst-case, he’d just end up back here. But there if there was _any_ chance they could get out of the woods and back to the world of the living… No. Can’t think about it. Rather than hope, he focused on the cold, mathematical inevitability: a chance with equally unlikely outcomes. Offerings in conflict.

“Come to the Estate with me. You owe me,” Dwight insisted, and went for the door. MacMillan followed sorrowfully but dutifully after.

Truthfully, Dwight didn’t think it mattered where they went to, but something felt distinctly fitting about the Estate, the place where it had all ended and began again for the Trapper. They travelled through the wending woods and found the door, stepping through it and watching it warp behind them. The well-travelled ground was grey and damp and clinging with mist, an utterly empty amalgamation of bad dreams, and Dwight strode freely into the grounds. The grass was to his knees, and trees stood all about.

Evan was looking at him curiously, with frustration…but beneath it was a solid chunk of stone, through which nothing flowed.

In a way, Dwight was surprised it had taken so little. That the one who pursued him so relentlessly as to keep him captive would so easily give him up. But it spoke to an expectation of being given up in the first place. He predicted that he would be cast aside, so when it happened, he slid quickly into it. Dwight felt like a monster, no better than Evan’s consummate abusers.

But this was the toll for their egress: hopelessness. Only with utterly no hope could they escape.

A beam of light appeared in the dark, and Dwight watched Evan’s face fall further when he saw it. He knew what it meant; had known all along, even if he couldn’t admit it. Dwight half-expected he would reach out for him, but didn’t, simply staring woodenly at him. And that was the final design to Dwight’s own escape. Dwight’s heart squeezed, but he walked backwards into the light, anyway.

“Goodbye, Evan,” Dwight whispered, and walked away. As he sunk into the beam, he felt a rush of pain, then lightness, like ice soothing a burn. He felt like a newborn struggling to breathe, and then all at once, the _whoosh_ of air in his lungs, and his eyes rolled back as the white light overtook him. Before he lost all sense, however, he saw a twin spire appear and cover Evan as well.


	14. Back Home?

Dwight stumbled awake, struggling to breathe, trembling like a foal as he brought himself up on shaking legs. In curled fingers, he was clutching a strange collection of ornaments and notes, which he looked at in almost disbelief. He seemed to have been spit out in the same place from which he left, although the season was different, as though some amount of time had actually passed. For that fact alone, he felt relief. When he left the thick of the trees and saw the sun broad in the sky, he nearly fainted with it.

Ten months. What murkily felt to be ten years was far shorter a time that passed in the world of the living. The Entity had relieved him, as Dwight expected, from its charge, but as he had not dared to expect, into the life he had left behind. And little had changed in ten weeks, Dwight found, after he crawled out of the wood and back to the city. Those vestiges in his pockets were the only record of his disappearance (that and his myriad scars), it seemed, as at work, his only consistent social setting, he was scarcely missed. He wasn’t sure why he went there first, of all places; maybe he was just curious as to how his absence was handled. Or maybe because, friendless and pathetic as he was on Earth, he had nowhere else to go.

“I thought you’d quit,” his shift manager said blandly, chewing on browning apple slices as Dwight wandered in one morning, after sorting his other affairs, in new clothes and no doubt looking more world-weary. Not that the boss looked up to notice.

“I could’ve been _dead_ all this time,” Dwight said, and well he supposed he was—while the manager just raised an eyebrow, “and you didn’t even _bother_ to look for me?”

The manager leaned on the counter and stared at him. A crowd shortly formed around them, made of the same coworkers who had left him to his fate in the woods in the first place. He had half a mind to start throwing punches, if he wasn’t certain that the Entity would’ve taken him with or _without_ their negligence. Instead he kept his fists at his sides.

“If I checked in on every person who stopped showing up for shifts, I’d never have a break,” the manager explained. “We all figured you just got a new job.”

Dwight lowered his head. He wondered if showing them the scars on his body, like the bite marks from bear traps around his ankles, or the gash in his side, or the massive hook-hole in his shoulder—which yes, were still there, he’d checked when first he awoke at the campsite—would do anything. But he decided on a raised middle finger instead.

“Fuck you, fuck all of you,” Dwight said levelly, flipping the bird in every direction before walking slowly out of the store. The effect was immediate, if not necessarily volcanic like he’d dreamed—his guileless coworkers all went silent and stared blankly back at him like they weren’t sure who he was. Dwight wasn’t sure, either: he certainly wasn’t the same person who disappeared all those months ago.

He wandered home to find his apartment still and smelly, and his two houseplants, a cactus on the windowsill and a spiky blue haworthia on the kitchen island, stubbornly alive, and felt a certain kinship with them as he trickled a bit of water over their soil. The condo was leased to his parents, so no one was coming by sniffing about for rent payments in his absence. And with all of his bills on auto-payments, it was like he’d never left. Maybe he hadn’t, he thought, mindlessly, as he took the spare key from under the doormat in the hall and trudged about inside.

He did a few chores before collapsing on the couch, and going through the texts on his phone. The texts—mostly from work, asking him to come in, stopped coming after about a week. There were a few from his mom just commenting about things that she was up to or had read in the news, and a few from his phone provider offering him better deals on unlimited data. He sighed.

The real world felt all-too bland, and for days, he couldn’t stop thinking there was a masked killer waiting for him just around the corner. Every shadow in the window, every pedestrian who stopped to tie his shoes across the street from Dwight while he went to the grocery store was a threat, and he felt his heartrate race every time he saw an unfamiliar face in his peripheral vision. He felt sluggish, overdone, and anxious as all hell, but strangely, the transition was not as difficult as he expected it to be. He settled back into a routine, looking for jobs online during the morning and relaxing in the evening reading social media. The world had just…ticked on without him.

He thought about Jake, Meg, Claudette and the others occasionally, thought about looking them up and wondering where the hell to start. Jake made himself purposely scarce, and some of the other folks from the campfire hailed from across the ocean; he wasn’t even sure he remembered where Ace claimed to be from, or where Claudette was living before she got taken—was it Quebec, or Connecticut? It only mattered of course if they’d made it back to the real world, too.

Dwight lay awake but with his eyes shut, in his lousy single bed, under a warm comforter, and pondered if he’d really ever been gone. The whole experience was like some long, repetitive dream, but the vestiges on his skin were real as the daylight that finally rose above him. He thought he’d be so happy to see the sun, he’d run out and try to kiss the sky the first time he saw it, and yet he stayed most of the time indoors. He remembered the cabin, its musty furniture and rainy porch, the cool, low cloud of the wood, Evan’s impassible stare, and his… his skin, his eyes, his look.

Evan was the most impossible variable of the whole insane experience. He was…a relic. He was bygone, a cliché… the impossible, brooding man-out-of-time. Dwight wondered if he was sent back to his “own time”, that is, whatever old-fashioned era of industry where men wore suspenders and called each other “mister” whence he came. Dwight sighed. He only wished Evan was free from his torment, his pain, his abuse. Maybe the Entity did keep its promise, after all.

Dwight got a new job right quick—an old one, actually, at an insurance broker’s that needed endless amounts of filing and collating done, and where he’d worked four years previous. He even found a few old acquaintances, there, and this time, insisted he would not take them for granted.

Where before, he’d’ve kept his head lowered when he passed Juliet in the corridor, hoping the senior admin assistant wouldn’t notice him, he now kept his head high, and greeted her clearly as she passed. He kept the names of his team well in hand: Law, Soren, and Selena. He encouraged, he insisted, he led. It didn’t take long for people to start to coming to _him_ for advice and help with their tasks, rather than the other way around. His superpower was manifest, permanently, and he had the Entity to thank for it—

No, that was unfair. _He_ was the one who took up the mantle of leader; it wasn’t anyone else’s idea. He might’ve been forced to scramble in the forest, but _he_ made his own way. He became brave. He spoke up when it was needed. He was the one in charge of his own character.

In the lunch room, groups of junior staff gathered around him, and listened to his tales of being lost in the woods, running for his life from all manner of villains, from horrible woodswomen, haunting spectres, crazed teens, and hunters with grudges. He enthralled them with his stories about escaping through decrepit doors, making his way through wending wood, and staring a killer dead in the eye. His cohorts sat about the plastic tables like they might a campfire, hanging on his every word.

“When did this happen?” one young man asked, and Dwight tipped his head to the side, thoughtful.

“Oh, it was just this weird camping trip I was on,” he said. “Thinking about writing it down. Could make a good movie, eh?”

He went home and slept, suddenly re-gifted the joy of being hungry, tired and sore. He slipped back into routine as easily as if he’d never left, and pondered if maybe yeah, it really was just a dream. He’d always wondered how people who had went through great tragedies, like death, abuse or disaster, just settled back to normal: how they weren’t just spending 100% of their time just _suffering_ , but he realized, now, that that’s all there was: routine, life, living. Still, imagining himself a survivor of some great trauma the like of which put him in the same category of war veterans, child abuse survivors, or people who lost their entire cities to earthquakes, didn’t seem…right. Was this another punishment of the Entity? To feel as though he was not…entitled to his sadness?

It was only after a few short days above ground that Dwight found himself reaching out for a body that wasn’t there in his bed. The memory of Evan’s stone-hard body under his hands was so vivid, like he could still feel the skeins of muscle pressed into his palms, the scratch of scars under his fingertips. He stared at the edge of his single bed, wide awake 4am, when it was still dark yet there was a bluish glow in the sky that promised daylight, but one expected it might never actually come, yet there it always arose, without a doubt.

While he lay in bed, hip pressed uncomfortably into an errant spring I that poked up through the foam, he felt ghostly fingertips brushing over his thighs and stomach. Heated breath warmed the back of his neck, and a kiss fell between two vertebrae. He reached his hands out to hold, to conquer the broad, liminal space between his body and an absent one, squeezing his hands into fists with frustration when they clasped only air.

Dwight swallowed, his throat dry. He reached a hand up to his pillow and gave it a squish, hearing the fibres creak beneath his ear.

MacMillan Mining was of an era before the internet, Dwight found, to his dismay. The only mentions of it were in old news articles, archived by the Seattle Public Library. He phoned them and spoke to the clerk, who directed him to a digitally archived book of the history of era businesses, written in 1904. A single footnote described an ancient photograph: _Archibald MacMillan stands before the newly-opened MacMillan Ironworks with son, Evan (left)._ In the picture, Evan was a stone-faced teen with a firm set to his jaw and shoulders so tight he could crush a brick between the blades. Dwight circled the mouse pointer around the picture, trying to suss out clues. The businesses were a matter of public record, but the family’s actual residence remained elusive.

What was he even doing? Dwight let out a sigh and tipped back his head, shutting his eyes. He felt like he was digging at a scab that had just begun to heal. Why was he even looking for this? Shouldn’t he be wanting to get as far away as possible from the woods and everything in it? He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

After a fitful sleep filled with bland, greyscale dreams of wood and brick and mist-soaked grass, Dwight awoke on his day off to an empty apartment. A few more plants might liven the place, Dwight pondered, or maybe even a goldfish—he could afford it if he saved. Life felt a curious mix of bland and thrilling—being able to eat, to sleep, to suffer, and actually _die_ for _real_ did not cease to be an exciting prospect, but his routine was… empty. He missed his friends. He missed…

Socked feet swung up on the couch, Dwight called the only person he could think would listen: mom. He could practically hear her smile over the call when she picked up and dove right in. After a few excited questions, all of which Dwight could answer with a “good, good, yeah, I’m good,” she went quiet, and Dwight took a miserable breath.

“I uh, I met someone,” Dwight said softly into the microphone.

There was a pause on the other end, and then an enthusiastic, “oh! Who?”

“He was a…we met on a camping trip,” Dwight explained, “but we broke up.”

His mother gave another pause, while Dwight wondered what part of what he’d said made her need to, and then, calmly,

“Oh, honey. Sometimes things just don’t work out, right?” His mom made a tutting sound with her tongue. “Is there anything I can do? Do you wanna come over? We can go to the outlets.”

As tempting as it was, his parents were a few hours away and Dwight preferred to wallow in his own solitude for the day. They talked a little longer before Dwight hung up, and threw himself dramatically over the couch. What was he supposed to do with this…lack? He felt a hole in his chest, and knew precisely what was meant to fill it.

It was an actual monster from nightmares too visceral for syndication even by the Home Film Network; it was also a man driven mad by loss and torture, but somehow remained lucid. Lucid enough to reason, to speak, to feel, to care, to…some other verb Dwight wasn’t ready to acknowledge. Lucid enough, indeed, to make Dwight’s heart melt. The man, all seven feet and 300lbs or whatever of him, all scars and bruises and frowns, left a massive hole in Dwight’s life, one he’d been stupid enough to carve out himself. He knew it was a risk.

He wanted to hate Evan, again, not for stealing him away, now, but for opening up to him, for being vulnerable and making Dwight fall. He wanted to, but…

He swung his desk chair across the scratchy floor and dug through the archives of the Seattle Library again. He moved on to Washington State University, searching, researching, and eventually finding himself in need of assistance again. He called a professor of history, who led him to a hobbyist historian, who led him to an archive of real estate from the turn of the century, that stood under glass in the museum above the tourist centre. He said he’d go check and call back, and so while Dwight waited, he scrolled up and down the streets on Goodle Earthlinks, looking for any sign, any clue, while fighting the voice in his head that asked him what the _hell_ he was even doing.

What was he looking for, really? Maybe if he could find the real-life MacMillan Estate, even if it stood empty and neglected for near a century, now, he could find some closure? Maybe if he found out Evan’s eventual fate: if he was spit back into his own time and found a job as far away from the mines of misery as possible, died after a long, healthful life, filled with peace and contentment—then maybe Dwight could let him go. Maybe, if he saw the obituary (“… _son of late metalworks mogul, survived by friends and family whom he didn’t murder, even a little…_ ”) with his own eyes, Dwight could make Evan into what he really was—figure from his dreams, a warped memory. He shook his head as he searched Goodle uselessly again. “MacMillan Estate WA” was simply not a workable search term, apparently.

Dwight found his fingers coming to his mouth to chew as he waited anxiously for a return call, and he stopped himself. He’d lost that habit a long while ago, and it seemed… a disservice to himself to start it again. He was not the same man as the one who went into those woods. He was new; he was true.

On Sunday morning, the hobbyist phoned back and told Dwight he’d found blueprints for a mansion fitting the Estate’s description, dated 1860. He had the address. He gave the address. Dwight nearly cried into the phone, saying “thank you,” over and over until the historian hung up. With the information all gathered around him, Dwight was once again stopped by a horrified lurch of the stomach. What _was_ he doing? Could he even handle this?

No Greyhounds went up to Seattle, not for a few years now, so Dwight got in his car and started the drive. The time allowed him to think out every possible scenario: Evan wound up in his own time, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after his dad was found to be missing, and died horribly in turn-of-the-century jail. Or, he woke up from the Entity’s torment a year after being taken, the whole nature of his father’s fate forgotten, moved on, got a job on a fishing boat and travelled the seas until he retired, died of a heart attack from drinking too much and moving too little, like any red-blooded American man ought to.

Or… he just died for real. Didn’t come to Earth, didn’t get another chance at life, just was released into the void. Moved on… the end. Dwight felt a twinge of pain in his chest that lasted pretty much the whole car ride. He wanted to see Evan redeemed. How, though? How?

He drove until his fingers were hard and white on the wheel and finally found the “rich” part of town outside of Seattle, across the water from the highway side, and drove up a hill, then down, then down again, and found himself at an ancient mansion. It was in quite good shape, really, the brickwork stained with the subtle browns and blacks of algae, and the roof intact, if a bit aged. The windows were clear and the front door was updated, it appeared, with a modern brass lock plate.

Dwight asked himself a few more times what the hell he was doing before going to the door. If no one answered, he would go home. If someone did, he would introduce himself, say the house belonged to his grandmother or some such and explain that he simply wanted to see it for himself. Yeah. He could do it.

His heart pounded like it hadn’t since he was in a trial, fearing death could lurk around every corner, every fog-lit puddle and tuft of dew-strung grass hiding a possible threat. Here, on the doorstep of the intact MacMillan Estate, the dangers were in the mildewed windows, and the shuffle of feet behind the oaken door. He blew out a breath and steeled himself for whatever came through that portal.

The lock turned and the door swung open. Behind it, a man, aged but strong, seven foot at least, nearly as many across the shoulders, with keen, dark-grey eyes that captured Dwight’s instantly with a bit of shock reflected in the pupils.

Dwight’s mouth gaped open, floundering for a bit before he got out a stunned _hello_.


End file.
